OVERTONES 


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OVERTONES 

A   BOOK   OF   TEMPERAMENTS 


RICHARD    STRAUSS,    PARSIFAL,   VERDI,   BALZAC, 
FLAUBERT,   NIETZSCHE,   AND   TURGENIEFF 


BY 

JAMES    HUNEKER 


Do  I  contradict  myself? 

Very  well,  then,  I  contradict  myself. 

Walt  Whitman 


WITH  PORTRAIT 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1906 


COPYRIGHT,    1904,   BY 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S    SONS 


Published  March,  1904. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  DAKUAliA 


TO 

RICHARD    STRAUSS 

A  MUSIC-MAKER  OF  INDIVIDUAL  STYLE 

A   SUPREME   MASTER    OF   THE    ORCHESTRA 

AN   ANARCH    OF  ART 

THIS    SHEAF   OF   STUDIES 
IS  ADMIRINGLY    INSCRIBED 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I.    Richard  Strauss i 

II.     Parsifal  —  A  Mystic  Melodrama 64 

73 

9i 


The  Book . 
The  Music 


III.  Nietzsche  the  Rhapsodist 109 

IV.  Literary  Men  who  loved  Music 142 

The  Musical  Taste  of  Turgenieff 142 

Balzac  as  Music  Critic 161 

Alphonse  Daudet 179 

George  Moore 188 

Evelyn  Innes 188 

Sister  Teresa 199 

V.    Anarchs  of  Art 214 

VI.    The  Beethoven  of  French  Prose      ....  228 

Flaubert  and  his  Art 228 

The  Two  Salammbos 244 

VII.    Verdi  and  Boito 236 

Bolto's  Mefistofele 272 

VIII.    The  Eternal  Feminine 277 

IX.    After  Wagner  —  What? .  307 

The  Caprice  of  the  Musical  Cat 307 

Wagner  and  the  French 321 

Isolde  and  Tristan 327 


RICHARD   STRAUSS 

We  cannot  understand  what  we  do  not  love. 

—  Elis£e  Reclus. 

I 

It  is  easier  to  trace  the  artistic  lineage  of 
Richard  Strauss  to  its  fountain-head — Johann 
Sebastian  Bach  —  than  to  stamp  with  a  contem- 
porary stencil  its  curious  ramifications.  And 
this  is  not  alone  because  of  a  similar  polyphonic 
complexity,  a  complex  of  themes  and  their  de- 
velopment without  parallel  since  the  days  of  the 
pattern-weaving  Flemish  contrapuntists  ;  but  be- 
cause, like  Bach  Strauss  has  experimented  in 
the  disassociation  of  harmonies,  and,  in  company 
with  his  contemporary,  the  master-impressionist, 
Claude  Monet,  has  divided  his  tones  —  setup, 
instead  of  the  sober  classic  lines  or  the  gorgeous 
color  masses  of  the  romantic  painters,  an  en- 
tirely new  scheme  of  orchestration,  the  basic 
principle  of  which  is  individualism  of  instru- 
ments, the  pure  anarchy  —  self-government  — 
of  the  entire  orchestral  apparatus.  This  is  but 
a  mode  of  technique  and  does  not  necessarily 
impinge  upon  the  matter  of  his  musical  dis- 
course ;  it  is  a  distinctive  note,  however,  of  the 

B  I 


OVERTONES 

Strauss  originality,  and  must  be  sounded  in  any 
adequate  discussion  of  his  very  modern  art. 

Borrowing  the  word  with  its  original  connota- 
tions from  the  erudite  and  clairvoyant  French 
critic,  Remy  de  Gourmont,  disassociation  in  the 
practice  of  Strauss  is  a  species  of  tone  chem- 
istry by  which  a  stereotyped  musical  phrase  is 
reduced  to  its  virginal  element,  deprived  of  facti- 
tious secondary  meaning,  and  then  re-created,  as 
if  in  the  white  heat  of  a  retort,  by  the  overpow- 
ering and  disdainful  will  of  the  composer.  We 
have  also  the  disassociation  of  ideas  from  their 
antique  succession,  that  chiefly  reveals  itself, 
not  in  a  feverish,  disordered  syntax,  but  in  the 
avoidance  of  the  classic  musical  paragraph  — 
that  symmetrical  paragraph  as  inexorably  for- 
mulated as  the  laws  of  the  Medes  and  Persians, 
resulting  in  a  Chinese  uniformity  maddening  in 
its  dulness  and  lifelessness  unless  manipulated 
by  a  man  of  intellectual  power.  Strauss  is  for- 
ever breaking  up  his  musical  sentences.  He  does 
this  in  no  arbitrary  fashion,  but  as  the  curve  of 
the  poem  is  ideally  pictured  to  his  imagination. 
A  great  realist  in  his  tonal  quality,  he  is  first 
the  thinker,  the  poet,  the  man  of  multitudinous 
ideas;  you  hear  the  crack  of  the  master's  whip, 
a  cruel  one  at  times,  as  he  marshals  his  themes 
into  service,  bidding  them  build,  as  built  the 
Pharaohs'  slaves,  obelisks  and  pyramids,  shapes 
of  grandeur  that  pierce  the  sky  and  blot  out 
from  the  vision  all  but  their  overwhelming  and 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

monumental  beauties  of  form  —  the  form  of 
Richard  Strauss.  He  is,  after  his  own  manner, 
as  severe  a  formalist  as  Josef  Haydn. 

We  are  now  far  away  from  what  is  called 
euphony  for  euphony's  sake ;  though  it  is,  as  in 
Bach's  case,  art  for  art  with  all  the  misused 
phrase  implies.  Intent  upon  realizing  in  tone 
his  vision,  —  the  magnitude  or  validity  of  which 
we  need  not  yet  discuss,  —  Strauss  allows  no 
antique  rubric  of  fugue  or  symphony  to  block 
his  progress  ;  even  the  symphonic  poem,  an  in- 
vention of  Franz  Liszt,  proves  too  cumbersome 
for  this  new  man  of  light  and  air  and  earth, 
whose  imagination  is  at  once  sumptuous  and 
barbaric.  The  picture  must  overflow  the  old 
frames.  It  must  burn  with  an  intense  life.  It 
must  be  true.  As  a  man  who  crept  before  he 
walked,  walked  before  he  ran,  Richard  Strauss 
has  the  right  to  our  sympathy.  He  was  a  won- 
der-child ;  he  is  one  of  the  world's  great  conduc- 
tors ;  he  wrote  symphonies  in  the  Brahms  style 
during  his  studious  youth ;  he  composed  a  little 
literature  of  chamber  music,  piano  pieces,  a  vio- 
lin concerto,  and  many  songs  prior  to  the  time 
when  he  faced  the  sun  of  Wagner  and  was  un- 
dazzled  by  its  rays.  He  knew  the  scores  of 
Wagner,  Liszt,  and  Berlioz,  has  imitated,  and 
has  forgotten  them  in  the  swirling  torrential 
tides  of  his  own  strange  temperament. 

Once  music  was  pure  rhythm ;  once  it  was 
howling  and  gesture.  It  moved  up  the  evolu- 
3 


OVERTONES 

tionary  scale  slowly  and  reached  the  kingdom 
of   the  instrumental  arabesque  with   difficulty ; 
on  this  side  was  the  ecclesiastical  liturgy  with 
its  rigorous  inclusions  and  suppressions ;  on  the 
other,  the  na'fve  young  art  of   opera.     Let  us 
acknowledge  that  Bach  was  the  crowning  glory 
of   the  art   polyphonic,  that   Palestrina  closed 
the  door  behind  him  on  churchly  chants,  that 
Beethoven  said  the  last  significant  word  in  the 
symphony  ;  let  us  admit  these  trite  propositions 
and  we  have  still  perplexing  problems  to  solve 
The  song-writers,  Schubert,  Schumann,  Brahms 
shall  not  detain  us  —  they  represent  but  an  ex 
quisite  province  of  music.    The  neo-symphonists 
beginning  with  Schubert  and  Schumann  and  end 
ing  with   Brahms,  are  not  to  be  weighed  here 
They  said  much  that  was  novel,  but  they  ad- 
hered to  the  classic  line ;  they  did  not  draw  in 
the  mass,  to  use  the  painter's  term.     It  is  to 
Berlioz,  Liszt,  and  Wagner  that  the  new  move- 
ment should  be  credited :  Liszt,  for  his  prophetic 
power  —  he   remodelled    the    symphonic   form, 
but  like  Moses,  he  was  destined  to  see,  not  to 
enter,  the  promised  land ;  Berlioz,  for  adding  to 
the   instrumental    palette   new  hues,    bewilder- 
ing nuances,  and  bizarre  splendor ;  Wagner,  for 
banishing  convention   from  the  operatic  stage, 
furnishing  the  myth  as  the  ideal  libretto,  for  his 
bold  annexation  of  the  symphonic  orchestra  and 
the  extraordinary  uses  to  which  he  put  it.     Yet 
only  one  of  the  three  men  has  held  out  the  torch 
4 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

to  future  composers  —  Franz  Liszt.  Berlioz's 
talent  was  largely  that  of  a  perverse  fresco 
painter  ;  Wagner  quite  closed  his  epoch  —  one 
of  rampant  romanticism  —  in  his  music-drama, 
and  by  his  powerful  genius  almost  swerved 
music  from  its  normal,  absolute  currents. 

He  quite  flooded  the  musical  firmament  with 
his  radiations.  There  was  but  one  god  and  he 
reigned  at  Bayreuth  ;  go  hence  and  worship,  or 
else  be  cast  with  the  unbelieving  into  outer  dark- 
ness where  there  is  gnashing  of  teeth !  The 
music-drama  was  the  synthesis  of  the  arts.  It 
was  the  panacea  of  all  social  evils,  and  Parsifal 
we  beheld  as  another  Paraclete !  Such  arroga- 
tion  of  omnipotence  was  bound  to  encounter 
reverses.  The  Wagnerian  mixture  of  words  and 
music,  of  drama  ranking  before  music  and  music 
playing  the  handmaid  role  of  commentator,  has 
stood  the  tests  neither  of  its  creator  nor  of  time. 
We  know  our  Wagner  now ;  not  as  a  philosopher 
—  shades  of  Schopenhauer!  —  not  as  a  poet  — 
let  us  not  invoke  the  spirit  of  Goethe !  —  not 
as  a  reformer,  dramatist,  revolutionist,  but  as  a 
composer  of  genius,  with  a  lot  of  wrong-headed 
theories,  whose  magnificent  music  floated  his 
doctrines  and  blinded  the  younger  generation 
to  their  speciousness.  It  is  music,  not  drama, 
that  rules  in  Wagner's  works. 

The  evil  done  was  this  :  Music  could  no  longer 
speak  in  her  own  divine  voice  without  the  aid 
of  words,  without  the  hobbling  drawbacks  of 
5 


OVERTONES 

singers,  stage  pictures,  plots,  all  the  thrice- 
familiar  mise  en  scene  of  the  Wagnerian  music- 
drama.  Nevertheless,  Wagner  did  enhance  the 
value  of  the  suggestion  in  music.  He  invented 
his  own  stenographic  method  of  speech  and  with 
it  literally  created  a  new  musical  consciousness. 
A  motive  means  something,  is  the  symbol  of  an 
idea,  or  state  of  soul ;  yet  we  know  that  if  this 
motive  has  to  be  accompanied  by  dramatic  ges- 
ture or  clothed  verbally,  then  all  the  worse  for 
it  as  pure  music ;  it  gains  visually,  but  loses  on 
the  imaginative  side.  Before  Wagner,  Liszt 
discovered  the  power  of  the  concise  phrase  and 
even  labelled  it ;  and  before  Liszt,  came  Beetho- 
ven in  his  C  minor  symphony ;  while  antedating 
all  was  Bach,  whose  music  is  a  perfect  store- 
house of  motivation. 

II 

And  again  we  reach  Richard  Strauss  by  way 
of  Bach;  in  the  music  of  the  modern  composer 
the  motive  achieves  its  grand  climacteric.  His 
scheme  is  the  broad  narrative  form,  a  narration 
that  for  sustained  puissance  and  intensity  has 
never  been  equalled.  The  new  melody  is  no 
longer  a  pattern  of  instrumentation,  nor  is  it  an 
imitation  of  the  human  voice  ;  it  is  extra-human, 
on  the  thither  side  of  speech.  It  is  neither  a 
pure  ravishment  of  the  ear,  nor  yet  an  abstruse 
geometrical  problem  worked  out  according  to 
the  law  of  some  musical  Euclid. 
6 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

Now,  music  of  the  highest  order  must  make 
its  first  appeal  to  the  imagination ;  its  first  im- 
pact must  be  upon  the  cortical  centres.  It  must 
not  alone  set  the  feet  rhythmically  pattering,  it 
must  not  merely  stir  us  to  emotional  thrilling. 
Not  in  the  sensuous  abandon  of  dance  rhythms, 
but  by  thought, — that  is,  by  musical  thought, 
in  a  chain  of  tonal  imagery,  is  the  aim  of  the 
new  music.  Walter  Pater  believed,  Plato-wise, 
that  music  is  the  archetype  of  the  arts.  It  was 
an  amiable  heresy.  But  music  must  stand  soli- 
tary —  it  is  often  too  theatric,  as  poetry  is  often 
too  tonal.  It  must  be  intellect  suffused  by  emo- 
tion. Its  substance  is  not  the  substance  of  its 
sister  arts.  What  music  has  long  needed,  what 
Wagner  and  the  church  writers  before  him  sought 
to  give  it,  is  definiteness.  The  welding  of  word 
and  tone  does  not  produce  true  musical  articu- 
lateness.  We  recognize  this  in  Tristan  and 
Isolde,  where  incandescent  tone  quite  submerges 
the  word,  the  symbol  of  the  idea.  Erotic  music 
has  never  before  so  triumphed  as  in  this  Celtic 
drama.  And  it  is  like  the  fall  of  some  great 
blazing  visitor  from  interstellar  space ;  it  buries 
itself  beneath  the  smoking  earth  instead  of  re- 
maining royally  afloat  in  the  pure  ether  of  the 
idea. 

The  arts  cannot  be  thus  fused.     When  faith 

moved  nations,  the  world  witnessed  the  marriage 

of  word  and  tone  in  the  ritual  of  the  church ; 

no  music  has  been  so  definite  since  Palestrina's 

7 


OVERTONES 

as  Wagner's — until  the  music  of  Richard  Strauss 
was  heard.  In  it  we  encounter  a  definiteness  that 
is  almost  plastic,  though  never  baldly  literal.  As 
we  noted  in  our  rapid  survey,  the  ethic  quality 
of  Beethoven,  the  philosophic  quality  of  Brahms, 
the  dramatic  quality  of  Wagner,  are  all  aside 
from  the  purpose  of  Strauss.  He  seeks  to 
express  in  tone  alone.  The  new  melody  is  but 
an  old  name  for  —  characterization.  And  now 
we  reach  at  last  the  core  of  Strauss,  who  is  a 
psychological  realist  in  symphonic  art,  withal  a 
master  symbolist ;  back  of  his  surface  eccen- 
tricities there  is  a  foundational  energy,  an  epic 
largeness  of  utterance,  a  versatility  of  manner, 
that  rank  him  as  the  unique  anarchist  of  music. 
He  taps  the  tocsin  of  revolt,  and  his  velvet  so- 
norities do  not  disguise  either  their  meagre  skein 
of  spirituality  or  the  veiled  ferocities  of  his  aris- 
tocratic insurgency. 

The  present  writer  put  this  question  to  Herr 
Strauss  in  London  in  the  summer  of  1903  :  Has 
he  always  subjected  himself  to  the  tyranny  of  an 
ideal  programme  before  composing  ?  The  notion 
seemed  elementary  to  him.  "  All  good  music  has 
a  poetic  idea  for  a  basis,"  he  replied ;  and  he  in- 
stanced the  Beethoven  piano  sonatas,  the  Bach 
fugues.  But  he  admitted  that  his  brain  caught 
fire  at  poetic  figures,  such  as  Don  Juan,  Don 
Quixote,  Macbeth ;  Also  sprach  Zarathustra,  Till 
Eulenspiegel,  Ein  Heldenleben.  Even  a  land- 
scape or  a  seascape  could  provoke  from  him  the 
8 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

charming  suite  of  images  we  find  in  his  Italia. 
With  the  poem  of  Death  and  Apotheosis,  affixed 
to  the  score  after  the  music  had  been  composed, 
we  may  see  that  Strauss  is  not  a  man  pinioned  to 
a  formula.  But  the  effect  on  his  hearers  of  his 
message,  on  those  hearers  who  have  submitted 
to  his  magic,  is  articulate  as  has  been  no  anterior 
music.  He  moulds  his  meanings  into  a  thousand 
forms  —  for  what  is  form  in  the  academic  sense 
to  this  arch-disintegrator  ?  And  these  forms 
resolve  themselves  into  as  many  more  shapes 
—  shapes  of  beauty,  terror,  tragedy,  comedy,  mo- 
rose mysticism,  ugly  platitude  ;  into  grimacing 
runes,  shuddering  madness,  lyric  exaltation,  and 
enigmatic  gropings  ;  yet  never  the  banal  rhetoric 
of  the  orchestra,  the  rhetoric  that  has  seduced 
so  many  composers  to  write  for  the  sake  of  the 
sound,  for  the  joy  of  the  style.  Strauss  always 
means  something.  All  is  in  the  narration  of  his 
story,  a  story  suggested  with  as  much  art  as  the 
inspiring  poem ;  a  misty  cloud,  perhaps,  to  the 
unsympathetic,  a  pillar  of  flame  to  the  initiated. 
It  is  a  new  speech ;  notes,  phrases,  groups, 
movements,  masses  of  tone,  no  longer  occupy 
conventional,  relative  positions  in  his  tone- 
poems.  The  violent  disassociation  of  the  old 
phraseology  —  his  scores  seem  to  be  heard  ver- 
tically as  well  as  horizontally —  smug  harmoniza- 
tion, melodies  that  fall  gratefully  into  the  languid 
channels  of  our  memory  —  in  a  word,  the  me- 
chanical disposition  of  stale  material  is  trans- 
9 


OVERTONES 

formed,  undergoes  permutation  to  make  wa^ 
for  a  new  syntax,  a  nervous,  intense  method  of 
expression,  strange  elliptical  flights,  erratic  fore- 
shortenings,  with  classic  and  romantic  canons 
cast  to  the  winds ;  yet  imposing  a  new  group- 
ing, a  new  harmonic  scale  of  values,  a  new 
order  of  melody  —  the  melody  of  characteriza- 
tion, the  melody  that  pilots  the  imagination 
across  uncharted  territory  into  a  land  over- 
flowing with  feeling,  intellect,  tenderness,  and 
sublimity,  with  irony,  ugliness,  humor,  and  hu- 
manity ;  a  land  not  lacking  in  milk  and  honey, 
the  land  of  Richard  Strauss !  A  delectable  re- 
gion is  discovered  by  this  young  man  when  we 
believed  that  the  grim  old  wizard,  Wagner,  had 
locked  us  up  forever  in  his  torrid  zone,  where, 
like  a  Klingsor,  he  evoked  for  our  parched  souls 
the  shadows  of  bayaderes  and  monstrous  flowers 
and  monstrous  passions  !  Lo,  another  Richard 
has  guided  us  to  a  newer  domain,  which,  if  not 
so  fascinatingly  tropical,  is  one  where  halluci- 
nating chromaticism  does  not  rule,  where  a  more 
intellectual  diatonic  mode  prevails.  Strauss  is 
master  of  a  cold,  astringent  voluptuousness. 
His  head  rules  his  heart.  Above  all,  he 
searches  for  character,  for  its  every  trait.  He 
himself  may  be  a  Merlin,  —  all  great  composers 
are  ogres  in  their  insatiable  love  of  power,  —  but 
he  has  rescued  us  from  the  romantic  theatric 
blight ;  and  a  change  of  dynasty  is  always  wel- 
come to  slaves  of  the  music  habit. 
10 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

His  music  did  not  exhibit  its  first  big  curve  of 
originality  until  the  publication  of  Don  Juan, 
opus  20.  His  intimate  charming  songs  are  the 
epitome  of  his  peculiar  dramatic  faculty  for 
clothing  in  tone,  or  rather  emptying  into  music, 
the  meaning  of  the  poet.  Avoiding  the  more 
recondite  question  of  form,  it  may  be  said  that 
as  in  the  songs,  so  is  it  in  his  symphonic  works. 
With  no  other  indication  than  a  title  (he  cannot 
be  blamed  for  the  extravagances  of  the  analyti- 
cal-programme makers),  Strauss  pours  upon  our 
puzzled  and  enchanted  ears  a  billow  of  music 
terrifying  at  times  :  it  is  a  veritable  tidal  wave  ; 
you  see  it  cresting  the  rim  of  the  horizon  and 
rolling  toward  you  sky  high.  His  Don  Juan 
and  Macbeth  are  romantic  in  style,  and  for 
that  reason  are  praised  by  those  who  fear  to 
desert  old  milestones  and  wander  in  the  tangled, 
fulminating  forests  of  his  later  music.  With  the 
story  of  the  mediaeval  German  rogue,  Till  Eulen- 
spiegel,  Strauss  unleashes  his  fantasy.  It  is  a 
scherzo  in  form  —  how  he  burlesques  the  form 
and  its  very  idea  !  The  color  scheme  is  daring, 
oppressively  high,  and  at  times  we  near  the  cos- 
mic screech.  All  is  prankishness,  darting  fancy, 
consuming  irony.  The  humor  is  both  rarefied 
and  Teutonically  clumsy.  Till  lives,  Till  is 
scampish,  Till  is  gibbeted.  Tone  itself  is  vola- 
tilized into  fiery  particles  that  seem  to  fall  upon 
the  listener  from  dizzily  pitched  passages.  Such 
a  picture  has  never  been  hung  in  the  august 
11 


OVERTONES 

halls  of  music.  It  offends.  It  blazes  in  the 
eyes  with  its  brilliant  audacity,  and  yet  it  is  new 
music,  music  gashed  and  quivering  with  rhyth- 
mic life.  Rhythmically,  Strauss  is  an  adven- 
turer into  an  absolutely  novel  clime.  He  touches 
hands  with  the  far  East  in  his  weaving  interior 
rhythms. 

Death  and  Apotheosis  is  a  tone-poem,  rather 
Lisztian  in  its  pompous  and  processional  picture 
at  the  close.  Its  very  title  calls  up  the  Weimar 
master's  Tasso.  But  it  differs  inasmuch  as  it 
is  better  realized  externally,  while  its  psychology, 
morbid  in  several  episodes,  is  more  masterful. 
It  is  not  a  Tasso,  not  a  poet  enthroned  in  death- 
less immortality,  but  a  soul,  the  soul,  which,  lying 
in  its  "  necessitous  little  chamber  "  of  death,  re- 
views its  past,  its  youth,  hope,  love,  conflict, 
defeat,  despair,  and  at  the  end  its  feverish  esctasy, 
its  sorrowful  dissolution.  Strauss  with  a  secret 
tiny  brush  has  surprised  the  human  heart  in 
travail.  It  is  pathos  breeding.  The  added 
touches  of  realism,  the  gasping  for  breath,  and 
the  lenten  tic-toe  of  the  heart,  should  not  disquiet 
us.  /Esthetic  propriety  is  never  violated.  And 
Tod  und  Verklarung  is  hardly  the  greatest  that 
is  in  Richard  Strauss. 

The  much-discussed  Thus  spake  Zarathustra 
is  not,  as  has  been  humorously  asserted,  an  at- 
tempt to  make  music  a  camel  that  will  bear  the 
burdens  of  philosophy ;  it  is  the  outcome  of  pro- 
found study  in  the  vaticinating  leaves  of  Nietz- 

12 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

sche's  bible.  Its  dancing  lyricism  is  reflected  in 
the  Strauss  score,  which  opens  with  a  pantheistic 
evocation  of  sunrise,  uplifting  in  its  elemental 
grandeur.  Seldom  has  music  displayed  a  result 
brought  about  with  such  comparative  simplicity 
—  a  simplicity  in  inverse  proportion  to  its  subt- 
lety. It  invites  to  the  prayer  of  the  sun  wor- 
shippers as  they  salute  their  round  burning  god 
lifting  in  the  blue.  The  composition  is  welded 
by  a  giant  will.  It  contains  so  many  incongru- 
ous elements,  that  their  complete  amalgamation 
seems  at  first  hearing  an  incredible  attempt.  It 
is  the  old  symphonic-poem  form  of  Liszt,  but 
altered,  amplified.  The  themes  appear,  dis- 
appear, surge  to  insanity  in  their  passion,  melt 
into  religious  appeal,  dance  with  bacchanalian 
joy,  mock,  blaspheme,  exhort,  and  enchant. 
There  is  ugly  music  and  hieratic,  music  bitter 
and  sweet,  black  music  and  white,  music  that 
repels  and  music  that  lures  —  we  are  hopelessly 
snared  by  the  dream  tunes  of  this  enharmonic 
fowler,  who  often  pipes  in  No  Man's  Land  on 
the  other  side  of  good  and  evil.  The  ear  is 
ravished,  the  eye  dazzled ;  every  brain  centre  is 
assaulted,  yet  responds  to  a  new  and  formidable 
engine  for  stimulating  ideas  and  emotions.  The 
Old-World  riddle  is  propounded  and  left  unsolved. 
And  we  seem  to  have  grazed  an  Apocalypse  of 
scepticism  in  the  conflicting  tonalities  with  their 
sphinx-like  profiles. 


13 


OVERTONES 


III 


The  greatest  technical  master  of  the  orchestra, 
making  of  it  a  vibrating  dynamic  machine,  a 
humming  mountain  of  fire,  Richard  Strauss,  by 
virtue  of  his  musical  imagination,  is  painter-poet 
and  psychologist.  He  describes,  comments,  and 
narrates  in  tones  of  jewelled  brilliancy ;  his 
orchestra  flashes  like  a  canvas  of  Monet  —  the 
divided  tones  and  the  theory  of  complementary 
colors  (overtones)  have  their  analogues  in  the 
manner  with  which  Strauss  intricately  divides 
his  various  instrumental  choirs :  setting  one 
group  in  opposition  or  juxtaposition  to  an- 
other ;  producing  the  most  marvellous,  unex- 
pected effects  by  acoustical  mirroring  and 
transmutation  of  motives ;  and  almost  blinding 
the  brain  when  the  entire  battery  of  reverbera- 
tion and  repercussion  is  invoked.  If  he  can  paint 
sunshine  and  imitate  the  bleating  of  sheep,  he 
can  also  draw  the  full-length  portrait  of  a  man. 
This  he  proves  with  his  Don  Quixote,  wherein 
the  nobler  dreamer  and  his  earthy  squire  are 
heard  in  a  series  of  adventures,  terminating  with 
the  death  of  the  rueful  knight  —  one  of  the 
most  poignant  pages  in  musical  literature.  Don 
Quixote  is  shown  as  the  quotidian  type  of  man 
whose  day-dreams  are  a  bridge  leading  to  the 
drab  and  sorrowful  cell  of  madness.  He  is  not 
mocked,  but  tenderly  treated,  by  Strauss.  It  is 
upon  the  broad-backed  Sancho  Panza  that  the 
14 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

composer  unlooses  his  quiver  of  humorous  ar- 
rows. The  score  is  thus  far  —  to  my  taste  — 
the  greatest  of  its  maker,  the  noblest  in  subject- 
matter,  in  dignity  of  theme,  complexity  of 
handling,  and  synthetic  power.  To  show  his 
independence  of  all  musical  form,  Strauss  se- 
lected the  most  worn  —  the  theme  with  varia- 
tions. Amazing  is  the  outcome.  No  other 
composer  before  him,  not  even  the  master  vari- 
ationist,  Brahms,  has  so  juggled  and  deployed 
the  entire  range  of  musical  material  in  serried 
battalions.  Virtuosity  there  is,  but  it  is  the 
virtuosity  that  serves  a  psychologist ;  never 
is  there  display  for  decoration's  idle  use.  All 
is  realistic  fancy.  A  solo  violoncello  and  a 
solo  viola  represent  the  half-cracked  pair  of 
Cervantes.  The  madness  of  Quixote  is  indi- 
cated by  a  device  musically  and  psychologically 
unique.  His  theme,  his  character,  goes  to  pieces 
in  mid-air,  after  the  mania  of  romance  reading. 
The  muting  of  the  instruments  and  general 
muddling  of  ideas  make  the  picture  of  slow- 
creeping  derangement  painfully  true.  Then 
follow  variations,  close  in  their  fidelity  to  the 
story,  and  never  unmindful  of  the  medium  in 
which  it  is  told.  Despite  the  disquieting  verisi- 
militude of  the  wind-machine,  of  the  sheep, 
Strauss  has  never  put  forth  his  astoundingly 
imaginative  powers  to  such  purpose.  We  are 
stunned,  horrified,  piqued,  yet  always  enthralled 
by  this  masterful  ironist  who  has  conserved  his 
15 


OVERTONES 

mental  sincerity.  The  finale  is  soothing,  its 
facture  is  a  miracle  of  tonal  values.  Don 
Quixote,  until  he  surpasses  it,  will  remain  a 
monument  to  Richard  Strauss. 

The  Hero's  Life  is  nearer  the  symphony  in 
a  formal  sense  than  any  of  his  newer  works.  It 
is  his  most  robust  composition.  The  concep- 
tion is  breath-catching,  for  it  is  a  chant  of  the 
Ego,  the  tableau  of  Strauss's  soul  exposed  as 
objectively  as  Walt  Whitman's  when  he  sang  of 
his  Me.  The  general  outline  of  the  work  is 
colossal ;  it  has  no  wavering  contours,  and  is  virile 
with  a  virility  that  shocks.  It  flouts  the  critics 
of  the  composer  and  shows  a  stupendous  battle- 
piece,  Tolstoyian  in  fury,  duration,  and  breadth. 
Cacophony  rules ;  yet  is  not  a  battle  always 
cacophonous  ?  The  old-fashioned  symbols  of 
trumpet-blasts  with  ornamental  passage-work  are 
here  rudely  disclaimed;  war  is  cruel,  and  this 
episode  is  repulsive  in  its  aural  cruelty.  The 
ancient  harmonic  order  will  be  indeed  changed 
when  such  a  tonal  conflict  is  accepted  by  the 
rear-guard.  Often  we  cannot  hear  the  music 
because  of  the  score.  For  the  rest,  there  are 
apposite  quotations  from  the  composer's  earlier 
works,  and  the  coda  is  beautiful  with  its  supreme 
peace,  supreme  absorption  in  Nirvana. 

This,  then,  has  Richard  Strauss  accomplished  : 
He  has  restored  to  instrumental  music  its  right- 
ful sovereignty ;  it  need  fear  no  longer  the  en- 
croachment of  music-drama,  at  best  a  bastard 
16 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

art.  Enlarged,  its  eloquence  enormously  inten- 
sified, its  capacity  for  rare,  subtle  beauty  in- 
creased tenfold,  the  modern  orchestra  has  been 
literally  enfranchised  by  Strauss  from  the  house 
of  operatic  bondage.  He  has  revolutionized 
symphonic  music  by  breaking  down  its  formal 
barriers,  and  he  has  filled  his  tone-poems  with 
a  new  and  diverse  content.  In  less  than  an 
hour  he  concentrates,  relates,  makes  us  see,  feel, 
and  hear  more  than  could  be  seen,  heard,  or  felt 
in  a  music-drama  enduring  six.  His  musical 
themes,  qua  themes,  are  not  to  be  matched  with 
Beethoven's,  his  melodic  invention  deviates  from 
the  classic  prettiness ;  yet  because  of  his  incom- 
parable architectonics,  of  his  majestic  grip  on 
the  emotional,  he  keeps  us  hypnotized  as  his 
stately,  fantastic  tonal  structures  slowly  uprise 
and  unfold  like  many-colored  smoke  from  the 
incantations  of  legendary  Eastern  genii.  He 
absorbs  absolutely  our  consciousness  with  a 
new  quintessence  of  poetic,  pictorial,  sculp- 
tural, and  metaphysical  art.  Music,  unaided 
by  words  or  theatric  device,  —  for  the  composi- 
tions of  Strauss  may  be  enjoyed  without  their 
titles,  —  has  never  been  so  articulate,  so  danger- 
ously definite,  so  insidiously  cerebral.  Madness 
may  lie  that  way ;  but  the  flaming  magic  of  the 
man  is  ever  restrained  by  deep  artistic  reverence. 
We  catch  glimpses  of  vast  vistas  where  disso- 
nance is  king ;  slow,  iron  twilights  in  which  trail 
the  enigmatic  figures  of  another  world  ;  there  are 
17 


OVERTONES 

often  more  moons  than  one  in  the  blood-red 
skies  of  his  icy  landscapes ;  yet  the  sacred 
boundaries  of  music  are  never  overstepped. 
Little  matters  the  niche  awarded  this  composer 
by  posterity  —  Richard  Strauss  is  the  musical 
enchanter  of  our  day. 

IV 

Richard  Strauss  was  born  at  Munich,  June 
n,  1864.  He  is  the  son  of  Franz  S.  Strauss, 
formerly  first  horn  player  in  the  Bavarian  Court 
Band.  His  father  has  written  studies  and  other 
compositions  for  his  instrument ;  and,  as  his  son 
said,  "  he  could  play  most  of  the  instruments  in 
the  orchestra."  He  sat  under  Wagner's  stick, 
but  was  not  a  Wagnerian.  Once  he  played  so 
well  that  Wagner  exclaimed,  "  I  fancy  after  all, 
Strauss,  you  cannot  be  such  an  anti-Wagnerian 
as  they  make  out,  for  you  play  my  music  so 
beautifully."  "What  has  that  got  to  do  with 
it  ?  "  answered  the  stubborn  artist.  The  mother 
of  Richard  was  born  Pschorr,  and  is  a  daughter 
of  the  wealthy  Munich  brewer.  The  boy  re- 
ceived his  first  piano  lessons  at  the  age  of  four 
and  a  half  from  his  mother.  Later  he  studied 
with  August  Tombo,  a  harp  player,  and  took  up 
the  violin  under  Benno  Walter.  At  the  age  of 
six  he  composed  a  three-part  song,  a  valse,  and 
a  polka  —  Schneider  Polka,  he  called  the  dance. 
Before  he  went  to  school  he  had  tried  his  hand 
18 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

at  songs,  piano  pieces,  and  an  orchestral  over- 
ture. Sent  to  the  elementary  schools  from  1870 
to  1874,  the  gymnasium  from  1874  to  1882,  and 
the  university  from  1882  to  1884,  Strauss  laid 
the  foundation  of  a  comprehensive  culture,  a 
catholicity  in  taste,  a  love  of  belles  lettrcs,  and 
a  general  knowledge  of  the  world's  literature. 
He  early  mastered  the  technics  of  the  piano 
and  violin,  and  in  1875,  with  Kapellmeister 
Fr.  W.  Meyer,  theory  and  composition.  This 
course  lasted  five  years.  The  composing  went 
on  apace.  A  chorus  for  the  Electra  of  Sopho- 
cles and  a  festival  chorus  were  given  a  hearing 
at  a  gymnasium  concert.  Three  of  his  songs 
were  sung  in  1880;  and  in  March,  1881,  his 
string  quartet  in  A,  opus  2,  the  scherzo  of 
which  he  wrote  in  his  fifteenth  year,  was  played 
by  Benno  Walter's  quartet,  to  whom  it  was  dedi- 
cated. Four  days  later  his  first  symphony  was 
accorded  a  hearing  under  Hermann  Levi,  and 
the  extreme  youth  of  the  composer  called  forth 
remonstrances.  In  1883  Berlin  heard  his  C 
minor  overture  under  Radecke.  Both  are  still 
in  manuscript. 

Of  this  formative  period  Strauss  has  told  us 
that,  "  My  father  kept  me  very  strictly  to  the 
old  masters,  in  whose  compositions  I  had  a  thor- 
ough grounding.  You  cannot  appreciate  Wag- 
ner and  the  moderns  unless  you  pass  through 
this  grounding  in  the  classics.  Young  composers 
bring  me  voluminous  manuscripts  for  my  opin- 
19 


OVERTONES 

ion  on  their  productions.  In  looking  at  them  I 
find  that  they  generally  want  to  begin  where 
Wagner  left  off.  I  say  to  all  such,  '  My  good 
young  man,  go  home  and  study  the  works  of 
Bach,  the  symphonies  of  Haydn,  of  Mozart,  of 
Beethoven,  and  when  you  have  mastered  these 
art  works  come  to  me  again.'  Without  thor- 
oughly understanding  the  significance  of  the 
development  from  Hadyn,  via  Mozart  and 
Beethoven,  to  Wagner,  these  youngsters  cannot 
appreciate  at  their  proper  worth  either  the 
music  of  Wagner  or  of  his  predecessors. 
'  What  an  extraordinary  thing  for  Richard 
Strauss  to  say,'  these  young  men  remark,  but 
I  only  give  them  the  advice  gained  by  my  own 
experience." 

Then  came  a  stroke  of  luck.  Von  Biilow's 
attention  being  attracted  by  the  charmingly 
written  and  scored  serenade  (opus  7)  in  E  flat 
for  thirteen  wind  instruments,  secured  it  for  the 
repertory  of  the  Meiningen  orchestra.  It  is 
scored  for  two  flutes,  two  oboes,  two  clarinets, 
four  horns,  two  bassoons,  and  contrabassoon 
Cor  bass  tuba).  His  second  symphony  in  F 
minor  was  composed  during  the  season  of 
1 883-1 884.  It  was  first  played  in  New  York 
under  Theodore  Thomas,  December  15,  1884, 
and  later  by  Walter  Damrosch.  It  shows  many 
traces  of  the  young  composer's  close  study  of 
Brahms.  The  horn  concerto,  opus  11,  and  the 
piano  quartet,  opus  13,  were  composed  at  the 
20 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

same  period.  The  latter  won  a  prize.  It 
shows  a  straining  for  bigger  effects,  as  if 
the  form  were  too  cramped  for  the  strenuous 
composer.  The  andante  and  scherzo  are  the 
more  agreeable  movements.  The  Wanderer's 
Sturmlied,  after  Goethe's  poem,  beginning, 
"  Wen  du  nicht  Verlassest,  Genius,"  revealed 
the  taste  for  literary  themes  and  themes  that 
exalt  the  individuality.  This  opus  14  is  written 
for  six-voiced  chorus,  two  soprani,  one  alto,  one 
tenor,  two  bassi,  and  orchestra.  It  also  shows 
the  serious  influence  of  the  Brahms  Schick- 
salied.  A  second  suite  for  wind  was  first  given 
at  Munich,  conducted  by  the  composer. 

"  Biilow,  who  was  very  fond  of  my  father," 
says  Strauss,  "  interested  himself  in  me,  and  I 
have  much  to  thank  him  for.  He  started  me 
on  my  conducting  career.  My  first  experience 
of  standing  before  an  orchestra  was  in  connec- 
tion with  the  performance  of  a  suite,  in  four 
movements,  for  wind  instruments,  which  I  had 
composed  at  his  request.  It  is  still  in  manu- 
script. Biilow  made  me  conduct  it  without  any 
rehearsal !  "  This  must  be  the  grand  suite  in 
B  flat,  misleadingly  numbered  opus  14  —  the 
same  opus  number  as  the  Sturmlied.  It  is 
scored  for  thirteen  wind  instruments,  and  has 
been  heard  in  London.  The  introduction  and 
entire  fourth  movement  are  said  to  be  the  best. 
It  is  early  Strauss.  Strauss  became  music 
director  in  Meiningen,  October,  1885,  conducted 
21 


OVERTONES 

his  own  F  minor  symphony  and  also  made  his 
debut  as  pianist  in  Mozart's  C  minor  concerto. 
Von  Billow  honored  him  by  conducting  the 
concerto. 

Strauss  had  already  come  under  the  influence 
of  Alexander  Ritter  (1833-1896),  a  violinist  in 
the  Munich  Orchestra  who  had  married  a  niece 
of  Wagner's.  Ritter,  like  von  Biilow,  was  a  man 
of  strong  magnetic  personality,  and  both  were 
warm-blooded  Wagnerians  and  Lisztians.  As 
boys  they  listened  to  that  wonderful  perform- 
ance of  Beethoven's  Choral  Symphony  given  by 
Wagner  at  Dresden  in  1849,  and  the  two  young 
gentlemen  schoolfellows  used  to  doff  their  caps 
every  time  they  passed  the  master's  windows  in 
the  Ostra-Allee.  "  Ritter  was  exceptionally  well 
read  in  all  the  philosophers,  ancient  and  modern, 
and  a  man  of  the  highest  culture.  His  influ- 
ence," says  Strauss,  "  was  in  the  nature  of  a 
storm-wind.  He  urged  me  on  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  poetic,  the  expressive,  in  music,  as 
exemplified  in  the  works  of  Liszt,  Wagner,  and 
Berlioz.  My  symphonic  fantasia,  Aus  Italien, 
is  the  connecting  link  with  the  old  and  the  new 
methods."  The  young  composer  went  to  Rome 
and  Naples  in  the  spring  of  1886.  Strauss  tells 
an  amusing  incident.  "  A  few  days  ago  I  was 
conducting  this  symphony  at  Brunswick,  when 
a  policeman  appeared  on  the  scene  and  stopped 
the  performance  because,  as  he  said,  some  con- 
dition had  not  been  complied  with.  Soon  after, 
22 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

however,  another  policeman  came  and  said  the 
concert  might  proceed.  This  unwarrantable 
interruption  caused  great  uproar,  and  the  audi- 
ence shouted  anathemas  against  the  police.  At 
the  close  of  the  symphony  I  turned  to  the  audi- 
ence and  said,  '  You  see,  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
in  this  Italy  there  are  no  anarchists ! '  " 

In  1886  he  left  Meiningen  to  become  third  Ka- 
pellmeister under  Levi  and  Fischer.  He  wrote 
his  tone-poem  Macbeth  at  this  period,  though 
it  bears  a  later  opus  number  than  Don  Juan. 
The  former,  after  a  revision  and  partial  rewrit- 
ing, was  dedicated  to  Alexander  Ritter,  and  first 
performed  under  von  Bulow  in  Berlin.  Strauss 
remained  at  Munich  until  1890,  when  he  received 
a  call  from  Weimar.  In  the  ducal  city  he  shed 
his  pupil's  skin  and  developed  into  a  brilliant 
conductor.  His  radical  tendencies  were  now 
beginning  to  be  recognized,  and  his  espousal  of 
the  music  of  the  extreme  Left  caused  his  con- 
ducting of  Wagner  and  Liszt  to  become  notable. 
At  Leipsic  his  influence  was  felt  as  conductor 
at  the  Liszt  society.  He  has  always  warmly  de- 
fended the  music  of  Wagner,  Liszt,  and  Berlioz. 

In  1892  his  lungs  were  affected  and  a  pro- 
tracted journey  to  Greece,  Egypt,  and  Sicily 
was  necessary.  He  was  not  idle,  however,  for 
on  his  return  his  grand  opera,  Guntram,  opus 
25,  and  dedicated  to  his  parents,  was  produced 
at  Weimar.  He  married  in  1894  Pauline  de 
Ahna,  the  daughter  of  a  well-known  Bavarian 


OVERTONES 

general,  and  the  soprano  who  created  the  Frei- 
hild  in  Guntram. 

From  Weimar  Strauss  returned  to  Munich  as 
Court  Kapellmeister,  and  three  years  later  he 
succeeded  Levi  as  general  music  director.  Not 
satisfied  with  matters,  he  left  Munich  to  become 
Kapellmeister  at  the  Berlin  Royal  Opera,  which 
position  he  still  occupies.  He  had  conducted 
the  Philharmonic  Orchestra  of  Berlin  after  the 
death  of  von  Bulow,  but  the  trip  from  Munich 
to  Berlin  was  too  exhausting,  and  Arthur 
Nikisch  was  permanently  engaged.  Strauss 
has  conducted  at  Bayreuth,  festivals  at  Liege, 
Cologne,  Leipsic,  Milan,  Moscow.  In  1897  he 
visited  London,  Paris,  Amsterdam,  and  Bar- 
celona, and  a  year  later  Zurich  and  Madrid. 
In  1903  he  conducted,  in  conjunction  with 
Wilhelm  Mengelberg,  a  series  of  concerts  in 
London,  a  Strauss  festival  organized  by  Hugo 
Goerlitz.  The  Amsterdam  Symphony  Orches- 
tra, a  remarkable  aggregation  of  artists,  played. 
His  Parisian  experiences  were  most  gratifying ; 
he  appeared  in  the  dual  roles  of  conductor-com- 
poser, his  wife  singing  his  lieder  with  exquisite 
taste. 

As  a  conductor  he  ranks  among  the  great 
ones.  He  is  particularly  sympathetic  in  his 
readings  of  modern  works,  though  any  one  who 
has  heard  him  direct  a  Mozart  opera  can  never 
forget  the  impressions  gleaned  —  the  blitheness, 
sanity,  sweetness.  He  is  cool,  never  eccentric 
24 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

in  his  beat,  and  does  not  play  upon  his  own  per- 
sonality, as  do  some  other  conductors. 

A  little  critical  and  polemical  literature  has 
grown  up  about  the  Strauss  case.  In  addition 
to  the  analytical  programmes,  some  of  them 
too  fantastic  to  be  of  value,  Hans  Merian 
has  written  an  extended  study  of  Also  sprach 
Zarathustra  ;  Gustav  Brecher,  Richard  Strauss  ; 
Dr.  Erich  Urban,  Strauss  contra  Wagner  —  in 
which  Wagner  is  proved  to  be  old-fashioned ; 
Urban  has  also  put  forth  a  pamphlet-essay, 
Richard  Strauss.  In  his  youth,  writes  Ur- 
ban, Wagner  cried  exultantly,  "  I  am  a  musi- 
cian ; "  in  his  age  he  mumbled,  "  I  am  a  poet." 
And  he  really  believed  he  had  discovered  in 
the  Greek  an  excuse  for  his  mutilation  of  drama 
and  music.  Then  Urban  turns  to  Liszt.  Liszt, 
he  said,  went  far,  but  not  far  enough.  He  grew 
timid  when  he  saw  the  logical  outcome  of  his 
experiments.  He  still  clung  to  the  classic,  to 
the  formal.  Strauss  appears.  Urban  thinks 
he  showed  absolutely  no  individual  talent  until 
his  opus  14,  Wanderer's  Sturmlied.  His  early 
work  is  Schumann,  and  Schumann  at  his  worst. 
The  learned  critic  does  not  believe  that  either 
von  Biilow  or  Ritter  counted  in  the  forma- 
tion of  Strauss.  He  looks  upon  Guntram  as 
an  accident,  and  Heldenleben  as  an  answer 
to  Zarathustra.  He  does  not  believe  the 
latter  to  have  been  inspired  by  Nietzsche,  — 
Strauss  composed  it  when  he  discovered  that 
25 


OVERTONES 

Nietzsche's  philosophy  coincided  with  his  own 
revolutionary  programme.  And  as  the  same 
ideas  are  expressed  in  Heldenleben,  the  titles 
could  be  exchanged  without  any  harm.  Truly 
a  Daniel  come  to  judgment!  It  is  in  Helden- 
leben that  Urban  sees  Strauss  at  the  top  notch 
of  his  ideals.  Here  is  musical  drama  without 
the  words,  scenery,  stage,  or  singers. 

Brecher  assigns  only  six  periods  to  the  devel- 
opment of  his  hero.  Brahms  has  much  to  say 
in  the  early  Strauss  music.  The  critic  outlines 
the  orchestra  before  Strauss  came :  Haydn  was 
the  first  real  instrumental  writer,  one  who  dis- 
pensed with  the  vocal  character;  Mozart  lent 
the  orchestra  freedom  and  beauty ;  Beethoven 
endowed  it  with  individuality ;  Berlioz  was  all 
color  ;  Liszt,  patterning  after  Berlioz,  developed 
thematic  variety ;  and  Wagner  employed  both 
the  color  of  Berlioz  and  Liszt's  theme-weaving 
for  his  profounder  and  more  poetically  dramatic 
music.  Strauss  followed  all  these  men,  but  re- 
turned to  pure  instrumental  forms,  avoiding  in 
his  later  poems  the  stringent  outlines  of  the 
absolute  scheme,  and  being  more  eloquent  than 
his  predecessors.  Macbeth  and  Don  Juan  be- 
long, says  Brecher,  to  the  third  period  of  Strauss. 
Death  and  Apotheosis  is  a  reactionary  period, 
as  is  Guntram — too  much  Liszt  and  Wagner, 
too  much  chromaticism.  From  opus  27  to  34 
is  the  fifth  period,  nearly  all  songs,  wonderful 
songs.  Till  Eulenspiegel  belongs  to  this  arbi- 
26 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

trary  grouping,  and  it  closes  with  Also  sprach 
Zarathustra.  The  sixth  period  opens  with  Don 
Quixote  and  Heldenleben.  Beauty  is  routed 
by  truth.  Even  Urban  thinks  Don  Quixote  is  a 
colossal  joke,  written  to  astound  the  Philistines. 
But  these  writers  are  in  sympathy  with  the 
composer.  The  terrible  Hanslick  of  Vienna  is 
not.  He,  even  at  the  expense  of  contradict- 
ing himself,  praised  Wagner's  melodic  gifts  as 
an  offset  to  the  more  meagre  thematic  inven- 
tion of  Strauss.  His  criticism  of  Also  sprach 
Zarathustra  is  not  criticism — it  is  scarification. 
He  heard  the  work  in  Vienna,  on  a  programme 
in  which  figured  Weber's  Euryanthe  overture, 
and  the  C  minor  symphony  of  Beethoven.  The 
good  doctor  is  a  joy  to  read  in  these  days  when 
politeness  has  closed  critical  mouths.  He  first 
drags  out  the  memory  of  Liszt  and  stamps  on 
it  —  Liszt,  who  begged  from  literature  his  sub- 
jects for  a  symphony,  and  "  making  the  alms 
pass  as  music."  Strauss  goes  to  philosophy  in- 
stead of  to  poetry.  And  then  he  slashes  to  the 
right  and  left  of  him.  It  is  capital  reading,  if 
not  convincing.  The  tone-poems  of  Richard 
Strauss  are  a  musical  refutation  of  Hanslick's 
theories.  There  is  no  "content"  in  music,  he 
declares ;  "  the  egg  stands,  anyhow,"  retorts 
Columbus-Strauss ! 

The  Strauss  piano  music  is  hardly  inviting  to 
any  but  the  most  devoted.     Severe  in  outline, 
27 


OVERTONES 

sombre  in  hue,  it  leans  not  to  the  sweet  intima- 
cies of  Chopin  or  Schumann.  Opus  5  is  a  solo 
sonata  in  13  minor,  some  thirty  pages  long.  I 
prefer  Tschai'kowsky's  effort  in  the  same  form. 
If  it  is  not  as  klaviermassig,  it  is  more  mellow. 
Stern,  and  in  the  mood  Doric,  the  several  move- 
ments of  the  Strauss  sonata  are  sinewy  rather 
than  plastic,  though  the  adagio  in  E  has  some 
moving  moments.  The  scherzo  is  light  and 
bright  in  execution.  The  composition  will 
never  become  popular.  In  opus  3  there  are 
some  pieces  of  interest, —  five  in  all,  —  and  here 
Schumann's  influence  is  writ  plain.  Dense  is 
the  pattern,  while  the  ideas  are  based  on  a  poetic 
idea.  Two  numbers  from  opus  9,  Stimmungs- 
bilder,  will  please.  They  are  a  tender  Trau- 
merei  and  a  delicate  lyrical  bit  called  An 
Einsamer  Quelle.  In  the  latter  the  harmonic 
changes  recall  Wagner.  The  most  ambitious 
piano  music  is  the  burleske  in  D  minor  for 
piano  and  orchestra.  This  must  have  been 
written  in  1885,  though  it  bears  no  opus  num- 
ber. It  is  extremely  difficult  in  the  solo  part, 
and  not  especially  grateful.  I  can  recall  no  one 
but  Eugen  d' Albert  and  Hcrr  Backhaus  as 
having  played  it  —  the  latter  at  the  London 
Strauss  festival  of  1903.  Here  Brahms  is  to 
the  fore,  the  very  opening  bar  of  the  piano  being 
the  theme  of  Brahms's  first  D  minor  ballade. 
But  how  different  the  treatment !  Bitter,  rather 
airy,  more  sardonic  than  witty,  this  burleske 
28 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

demonstrates  that  the  Teuton  often  unbends  as 
sadly  and  stiffly  as  the  Briton.  Compare  the 
piece  with  the  incomparable  jesting  of  Scarlatti's 
burlesca,  that  joke  which  begins  in  G  minor  and 
ends  in  D  minor !  It  is  the  eternal  difference 
between  the  Italian  and  the  German.  Crabbed 
I  call  this  burleske.  The  'cello  and  piano 
sonata  in  F  is  a  capital  composition,  and  so  is 
the  sonata  m  E  flat  for  viola  and  piano.  His 
concerto  for  violin  and  orchestra  in  D  minor  has 
never  received  the  attention  it  deserves ;  and  I 
wish  for  the  sake  of  novelty  that  the  beautiful 
horn  concerto,  opus  n,  would  be  given.  For 
the  waldhorn  Strauss  has  a  natural  sympathy. 

The  lieder  literature  is  important  in  quality. 
He  has  written  nearly  a  hundred  songs,  some 
of  them  priceless  in  idea  and  workmanship.  It 
is  in  this  form  that  his  friends  and  enemies  have 
agreed  upon  his  melodic  invention.  This  refers 
to  the  various  collections  numbered  opus  10, 
15,  17,  19,  21,  26,  27,  29,  32,  and  34;  but  I  won- 
der whether  the  later  collections  in  opus  39  and 
opus  41,  43,  and  44  are  received  with  the  same 
enthusiasm.  Some  of  them  are  harmonically 
difficult  to  grasp,  and  many  are  deceptive  ;  when 
Strauss  seems  at  his  simplest,  he  is  often  most 
irritatingly  complex  and  recondite.  But  an 
overflowing  meed  of  praise  must  be  awarded 
the  opus  15,  the  lovely  serenade  in  F  sharp 
from  opus  17,  several  from  opus  21  and  27, 
and  all  of  opus  29.  A  critic  considers  O  warst 
29 


OVERTONES 

du  rnein,  from  opus  26,  number  2,  and  Sehn- 
sucht,  opus  32,  as  the  most  beautiful  of  all. 
No  mood  seems  denied  Strauss.  His  exposition 
of  the  most  exotic  is  indicative  of  a  subtle,  rather 
than  a  sensuous,  musical  nature.  Yet  how  sim- 
ply and  naturally  he  has  indicated  a  primitive 
emotion  in  Jungenhexenlied,  opus  39,  number  2. 
The  song  is  a  masterpiece.  The  sturdy  power, 
the  sheer  muscularity,  of  The  Workman  from 
the  same  set,  should  make  it  beloved  of  manly 
male  singers.  Its  great,  resounding  blows  in  F 
minor  stir  one's  very  soul.  And  its  sentiment 
is  that  of  healthy  anarchy,  as  befits  the  text  of 
the  poet  Richard  Dehmel.  Death  the  Releaser, 
Leises  Lied,  and  To  my  Son  complete  this  opus. 
The  last  has  a  noble  ring.  The  Silent  Long- 
ing is  the  capture  of  an  exquisitely  evanescent 
mood.  There  are  five  numbers  in  opus  41, — 
a  Cradle  Song ;  In  der  Campagna ;  On  the 
Shore, — full  of  introspective  beauty,  a  dashing, 
vagabondish  song  ;  Brother  Good-for-nothing  ; 
and  Whisp'ring  Songs.  In  all  the  music  seeks 
the  emotional  curve,  in  all  is  there  absolute 
fidelity  to  the  poetic  theme  —  that  is,  fidelity 
as  the  composer  conceives  it.  Of  mere  sen- 
suous or  decorative  music-making  there  is  none. 
Strauss  is  ever  beset  by  the  idea;  whether  dra- 
matic, metaphysical,  or  romantic-lyric,  the  idea 
takes  precedence  of  the  sound  that  clothes  it. 
So  there  is  little  pretence  of  form,  little  thought 
of  vocal  exigencies,  while  the  piano  accompani- 
30 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

ments  are  the  most  difficult  ever  written.  If  he 
hammers  out  epics  in  his  orchestral  compositions, 
in  his  lyrics  he  is  the  patient,  curious  master  of 
miniature,  the  ivory  worker  of  shapes  exotic. 

Guntram,  for  which  Strauss  wrote  his  own 
book,  the  first  opera  of  this  composer,  is  not 
familiar  to  Americans.  It  was  never  a  great 
success,  despite  its  earnestness  and  indisputable 
depth.  Modelled  on  Wagnerian  lines,  it  has  for 
a  subject  the  doings  of  The  Fighters  for  Love, 
an  order  of  knights,  which,  Parsifal-like,  in  the 
middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  wars  for  the 
Cross  and  Brotherly  Love ;  but  with  song  and 
not  with  sword.  Guntram,  the  hero,  is  a  Fighter 
for  Love,  and  his  adventures  and  passion  for 
Freihild  form  the  basis  of  the  book.  The 
preludes  to  Acts  I  and  II  have  been  played  in 
this  country.  The  first  is  a  lovely  scheme  of 
orchestration,  Wagnerian  in  texture,  and  cele- 
brates the  yearning  desire  which  the  singers 
have  consecrated  to  art  and  to  the  Cross.  The 
second  prelude  is  a  brilliant,  joyous  picture  of  a 
Festival  of  Victory.  The  form  and  develop- 
ment are  absolutely  free.  It  is  interesting  to 
note,  on  the  last  page  of  the  first  prelude,  an 
essential-turn  that  comes  straight  from  Gotter- 
dammerung.  Strauss  employs  it  with  skill  as  a 
pregnant  motive.  While  it  is  too  short  for  con- 
cert performance,  the  prelude  of  the  last  act  is 
the  embodiment  of  yearning  and  rich  in  har- 
31 


OVERTONES 

monic  life.  The  great  duo  of  Guntram  and 
Freihild  and  Guntram's  farewell  are  noble  speci- 
mens of  dramatic  writing.  Nevertheless  the 
work  lacks  big  wings. 

Two  later  compositions  of  Strauss,  bearing  the 
opus  number  42,  are  for  Mannerchor,  —  Liebe 
and  Altdeutsches  Schlachtlied,  both  after  Her- 
der. Two  sixteen-voiced  mixed  choruses  a  ca- 
pella  are  also  announced.  Enoch  Arden,  opus 
38,  is  a  melodrama  for  piano  and  recitative.  It 
is  an  interesting  experiment,  being  melodious 
and  effective.  Written  for  von  Possart  the 
German  tragedian,  the  weight  of  the  work  falls 
upon  the  reader. 

At  the  seventy-seventh  Netherrhenish  Music 
Festival  in  Aix-la-Chapelle,  June,  1900,  Strauss 
produced  two  Grossere  Gesange,  opus  44,  for 
low  voice  and  orchestra.  Decidedly  here  the 
bust  is  in  the  orchestra,  the  pedestal  — !  The 
Ruckert  and  Richard  Dehmel  are  the  poets 
levied  upon  — the  first  represented  by  his  Nacht- 
lichtergang,  the  other  by  a  Notturno. 

Strauss  occasionally  indulges  in  flashes  of  sly 
humor.  Here  is  a  footnote  he  appends  to  his 
song  opus  31,  number  2,  Wenn :  — 

Should  any  singers  think  of  singing  this  song,  while 
the  nineteenth  century  is  still  in  existence,  the  com- 
poser would  advise  them  to  transpose  it  from  this 
point,  a  half-tone  lower  {i.e.  into  E  flat),  so  that  the 
composition  may  thus  end  in  the  key  in  which  it 
began. 

32 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

Fuersnot,  a  Singgedicht  in  one  act,  book  by 
Ernst  von  Wolzogen,  music  by  Richard  Strauss, 
was  produced  at  the  Royal  Opera  House,  Dres- 
den, November  21,  1 90 1 .  The  libretto  is  founded 
on  a  Netherland  story,  entitled,  The  Fire  Fam- 
ine at  Oudenaerde.  Emil  Paur  introduced 
several  excerpts,  sonorous,  brilliant  music,  at  a 
Philharmonic  concert. 

When  questioned  about  his  future  plans  Strauss 
replied :  "  I  have  made  a  musical  setting  to 
Uhland's  Taillefer  for  chorus,  soli,  and  full  or- 
chestra. I  am  surprised  that  musicians  have 
not  availed  themselves  of  this  fresh,  magnificent 
poem  before  —  at  least  I  have  heard  of  no  set- 
ting. Altogether  one  admires  Uhland  too  little 
these  days.  When  I  was  younger  I  neglected 
reading  him  very  much ;  but  now  I  find  one 
beauty  after  Another  in  his  writing.  I  also  have 
material  for  two  symphonic  poems,  but  don't 
know  which  one  I  shall  use  —  if  indeed  I  finish 
any  —  now.  It  usually  takes  two  years  before 
a  composition  begins  to  assume  form  with  me. 
At  first  there  comes  to  me  an  idea  —  a  theme. 
This  rests  with  me  for  months  ;  I  think  of  other 
things  and  busy  myself  with  everything  but  it ; 
but  the  idea  is  fermenting  of  its  own  accord. 
Sometimes  I  bring  it  to  mind,  or  play  the  theme 
on  the  piano,  just  to  see  how  far  it  has  pro- 
gressed —  and  finally  it  is  ready  for  use.  You 
see,  therein  lies  the  real  art  of  creation  —  to 
D  33 


OVERTONES 

know  exactly  when  an  idea  is  ripe,  when  one  can 
use,  must  use  it.  More  and  more  I  cling  to  the 
belief  that  we  conscious  people  have  no  control 
over  our  creative  power.  For  instance,  I  slave 
over  a  melody  and  encounter  an  obstacle  which  I 
cannot  surmount,  however  I  try.  This  during  the 
course  of  an  evening ;  but  the  next  morning  the 
difficulty  has  surrendered  itself,  just  as  though 
my  creative  forces  had  toiled  at  it  over  night. 
Several  years  ago  I  told  a  friend  that  I  meant 
to  compose  a  symphonic  poem,  Spring.  He 
repeated  my  remark,  and  at  the  making  up  of 
the  next  music  festival  programme  my  Spring 
was  placed  and  I  was  asked  to  conduct  it !  The 
work  is  not  even  composed  yet,  despite  the  great 
number  of  themes  and  sketches  I  have  for  it.  In 
fact,  I  don't  know  when  I  will  compose  it — if  at 
all.  Sometimes  a  theme  occurs  first  to  me,  and 
I  find  the  poetic  mate  to  it  later ;  but  at  others 
the  poetic  idea  begins  to  take  on  musical  form. 
I  may  even  compose  an  opera  soon.  A  young 
Vienna  poet  has  suggested  a  libretto  which  ap- 
peals to  me  very  much.  A  libretto  of  my  own 
is  also  receiving  some  consideration  from  me. 
"  The  old  metre  of  poetry,  the  iambic  and 
trochiac  rhythms  —  also  the  rhyme  —  are  use- 
less in  music,  because  the  latter  has  an  entirely 
different  rhythm,  and  this  must  necessarily  de- 
stroy that  of  poetry  when  the  two  are  joined. 
According  to  my  opinion,  the  most  available 
forms  are  the  Nibelungen  verses  or  a  free 
34 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

prose.  Why  cannot  music  express  philosophy  ? 
Metaphysics  and  music  are  sisters.  Even  in 
music  one  can  express  a  view  point,  and  if  one 
wishes  to  approach  the  World  Riddle,  perhaps 
it  can  be  done  with  the  aid  of  music.  Is  not 
the  third  act  of  Tristan  transcendental  phi- 
osophy  purely  ?  Lastly,  my  next  tone-poem 
will  illustrate  'a  day  in  my  family  life.'  It 
will  be  partly  lyrical,  partly  humorous  —  a  triple 
fugue,  the  three  subjects  representing  papa, 
mamma,  and  the  baby ! "  This  latter  is  the 
Sinfonia  Domestica  of  which  the  first  perform- 
ance anywhere,  was  announced  for  March  9, 
1904,  at  Carnegie   Hall,   New  York   City. 

Jean  Marnold,  the  acute  critic  of  the  Mercure 
de  France,  calls  attention  to  the  "  melody  of 
Strauss,  which  is  frankly  diatonic,  the  tonal 
character  definitely  determined."  This  state- 
ment will  be  challenged  by  those  who  take  the 
composer's  middle  period  as  a  criterion  of  his 
chromatic  tendencies.  But  examine  the  later 
themes,  and  we  are  forced  to  agree  with  M. 
Marnold.  Arthur  Symons  finds  that  Strauss 
is  cerebral.  He  writes :  "  Strauss  is  what  the 
French  call  tin  cerebral,  which  is  by  no  means 
the  same  thing  as  a  man  of  intellect.  Un 
cMbral  is  a  man  who  feels  through  his  brain, 
in  whom  emotion  transforms  itself  into  idea, 
rather  than  in  whom  idea  is  trar.sfigured  by 
emotion.  Strauss  has  written  '.  Don  Juan 
without  sensuality,  and  it  is  in  his  ack  of  sensu- 
35 


OVERTONES 

ality  that  I  find  the  reason  of  his  appeal. 
All  modern  music  is  full  of  sensuality,  since 
Wagner  first  set  the  fevers  of  the  flesh  to 
music.  In  the  music  of  Strauss  the  Germans 
have  discovered  the  fever  of  the  soul.  And  that 
is  indeed  what  Strauss  has  tried  to  interpret." 
W.  J.  Henderson  is  open  to  conviction.  He 
wrote  :  — 

"  It  is  too  soon  for  us  to  say  that  Strauss  will 
influence  the  future.  He  may  leave  us  nothing 
but  certain  purely  mechanical  improvements  in 
orchestral  technics.  Even  these  will  have  their 
value.  Yet  all  recent  attempts  at  progress  in 
music  have  been  in  the  direction  of  more  definite 
expression,  and  Strauss  may  be  only  a  stepping- 
stone  in  an  advance  toward  that  blissful  epoch 
whose  hearers  will  display  as  much  imagination 
as  its  composers,  that  transcendent  condition 
in  which  genius  understands  genius." 

Edward  E.  Ziegler  discerns  that  Richard 
Strauss  is  "  a  master  of  music  mathematics  and 
one  who  is  composing  music  for  the  present.  It 
is  an  easy  evasion,"  he  adds,  "  to  shift  the 
responsibility  for  what  the  living  generation 
cannot  easily  or  will  not  willingly  grasp  and  to 
proclaim  that  such  intricate  writing  is  for  the 
future.  But  music  has  ever  reflected  life,  and 
no  other  composer  has  so  nearly  approached  a 
musical  expression  of  our  time  as  has  Strauss. 
The  febrile  unrest,  the  neurotic  striving  of  the 
hour,  all  have  their  musical  equivalent  in  his 
36 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

greater  compositions.  Plying  the  stress  of  em- 
phasis as  Strauss  does  is  characteristic  of  the 
present  as  is  typical  his  use  of  the  enormous 
orchestra.  All  life  has  become  agitated  by  the 
exaggeration  of  the  hour.  It  needed  but  a 
master  like  Strauss  to  express  this  truth  in 
music." 

August  Spanuth  holds  that  "  Richard  Strauss 
may  be  a  monstrous  phenomenon,  yet  he  em- 
bodies the  domineering  spirit  of  modern  music. 
For  more  than  two  centuries  composers  have 
endeavored  to  vindicate  the  cause  of  programme- 
music,  which  the  staunch  old  champions  of 
'  absolute  music '  have  fought  from  the  outset. 
However,  after  the  efforts  of  Berlioz  and  Liszt, 
Richard  Strauss  has  succeeded  in  reversing  the 
question,  making  it  read  thus :  Is  there  a  future 
left  for  instrumental  music  outside  of  the  de- 
scriptive, pictorial,  illustrative,  suggestive,  and 
philosophizing  music  of  to-day  ?  " 

Ernest  Newman,  in  a  masterly  article,  con- 
cludes with  this  telling  passage  :  — 

.  .  .  This  kind  of  music  adds  to  our  knowledge  of 
man  and  the  world  as  much  as  does  a  play  of  Ibsen  or 
a  novel  of  Tolstoy.  Certainly  to  any  one  who  knows 
Strauss's  music  to  Don  Quixote,  the  story  of  Cervantes 
is  henceforth  inconceivable  without  it ;  the  story  itself, 
indeed,  has  not  one  tithe  of  the  humor  and  the  pro- 
found sadness  which  is  infused  into  it  by  Strauss. 
What  he  has  done  in  this  work  is  to  inaugurate  the 
period  of  the  novel  in  music.  And  here  at  last  we  see 
37 


OVERTONES 

the  subtle  fitness  of  things  that  has  deprived  Strauss 
of  those  purely  lyrical  qualities,  whose  absence,  as  I 
have  previously  argued,  makes  it  impossible  for  him 
to  be  an  absolute  creator  of  shapes  of  pure  self-sus- 
tained beauty.  His  type  of  melody  is  now  seen  to  be, 
not  a  failing,  but  a  magnificent  gift.  It  is  the  prose 
of  music  —  a  grave,  flexible,  eloquent  prose.  His 
style  is  nervous,  compact,  sinuous,  as  good  prose 
should  be,  which,  as  it  is  related,  through  its  subject- 
matter,  more  responsibly  to  life  than  is  poetry,  must 
relinquish  some  of  the  fine  abandonment  of  song,  and 
find  its  compensation  in  a  perfect  blend,  a  perfect 
compromise  of  logic  and  rapture,  truth  and  ideality. 
"  I  can  conceive,"  says  Flaubert,  in  one  of  his  letters, 
"  a  style  which  should  be  beautiful  ;  which  some  one 
will  write  one  of  these  days,  in  ten  years  or  in  ten 
centuries  ;  which  shall  be  rhythmical  as  verse,  precise 
as  the  language  of  science,  and  with  undulations, 
modulations  as  of  a  violoncello,  flashes  of  fire  ;  a  style 
which  would  enter  into  the  idea  like  the  stroke  of  a 
stiletto  ;  a  style  on  which  our  thoughts  would  sail  over 
gleaming  surfaces,  as  it  were,  in  a  boat  with  a  good 
wind  aft." 

No  better  description,  it  seems  to  me,  could  be 
had  of  the  musical  style  of  Strauss,  with  its  constant 
adaptation  to  the  emotional  and  intellectual  atmos- 
phere of  the  moment,  and  its  appropriateness  to  the 
realistic  description  of  character  and  milieu  which  is 
his  mission  in  music.  His  qualities  are  homogeneous  ; 
he  is  not  a  Wagner  manque  nor  an  illegitimate  son 
of  Liszt,  but  the  creator  of  a  new  order  of  things  in 
music,  the  founder  of  a  new  type  of  art.  The  only 
test  of  a  literature  being  alive  is,  as  Dr.  Georg  Brandes 
38 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

says,  whether  it  gives  rise  to  new  problems,  new 
questionings.  Judged  by  this  test,  the  art  of  Strauss 
is  the  one  sign  of  new  and  independent  life  in  music 
since  Wagner ;  for  it  perpetually  spurs  us  on  to  the 
discussion  of  fresh  problems  of  aesthetics,  of  psychology, 
and  of  form. 

V 

Richard  Strauss  is  the  most  intellectual  of 
musicians.  Saint-Saens  pointed  out  long  ago 
the  master  part  harmony  would  play  in  the 
music  of  the  future,  and  Strauss  realized  the 
theory  that  melody  is  no  longer  sovereign  in 
the  kingdom  of  tone ;  his  master  works  are 
architectural  marvels.  In  structure,  in  rhythmi- 
cal complexity,  in  striking  harmonies,  ugly,  bold, 
brilliant,  dissonantal,  his  symphonic  poems  are 
without  parallel.  Berlioz  never  dared,  Liszt 
never  invented,  such  miracles  of  polyphony,  a 
polyphony  beside  which  Wagner's  is  child's 
play  and  Bach's  is  outrivalled.  And  this  learn- 
ing, this  titanic  brushwork  on  vast  and  sombre 
canvases,  are  never  for  formal  music's  sake ; 
indeed,  one  may  ask  if  it  is  really  music,  and 
not  a  new  art.  It  is  always  intended  to  mean 
something,  say  something,  paint  some  one's 
soul ;  it  is  an  attempt  to  make  the  old  absolute 
music  new  and  articulate.  This  flies  in  the 
face  of  Schopenhauer,  who  declared  music  to 
be  a  presentative,  not  a  representative,  art.  In 
his  gallery  of  psychological  portraiture  Strauss 
becomes  a  sort  of  musical  Dostoievsky.  He 
39 


OVERTONES 

divines,  Maeterlinck-like,  the  secret  tragedy  of 
existence,  and  paints  with  delicacy,  with  great 
barbaric  masses,  in  colors  that  glow,  poetic  and 
legendary  figures  which  yield  up  their  souls  to 
the  psychological  genius  who  questions  them. 
I  call  the  tendency  of  Strauss  decadent,  like 
Wagner's  ;  both  men  build  up  their  pictures  by 
a  multitude  of  infinitesimal  touches ;  both  men 
decompose  their  themes,  —  and  this  is  the  high- 
est art  of  the  decadence.  Unity  is  sometimes 
absent,  and  also  the  power  that  makes  for 
righteousness,  which  we  find  in  Beethoven's 
music. 

Touching  on  the  moral  of  this  new  dispensa- 
tion in  art,  I  may  confess  that  I  am  puzzled  by 
its  absolute  departure  from  the  ethic  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  is  not  precisely  a  pagan  code  that 
Strauss  presents  in  his  splendid  laconic  manner ; 
rather  is  it  the  ethic  of  Spinoza  ravished  by  the 
rhetoric  of  Nietzsche.  Affirmation  of  the  will, 
not  its  denial,  is  both  preached  and  practised 
by  this  terrible  composer.  For  him  the  ineluc- 
table barrier  of  barriers  is  the  return  to  simplic- 
ity, the  return  to  the  people.  He  may  be  simple 
in  his  complex  way,  and  he  may  sympathize 
lyrically  with  the  proletarian ;  yet  he  is  the  aris- 
tocrat of  aristocrats  in  art ;  and  his  art,  special- 
ized, nervous,  and  alembicated,  may  be  the  call 
to  arms  of  lonely,  proud  souls  that  refuse  to  go 
to  the  people  as  did  Tolstoy.  With  Ibsen's 
Brand,  not  Tolstoy's,  Levin  is  Strauss  in  closer 
40 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

communion.     And  he   may  hold  the  twentieth 
century  in  his  hand. 

During  his  Italian  trip  Strauss  wrote  Aus 
Italien,  opus  16,  a  symphonic  fantasia  that  has 
been  heard  in  America  with  delight.  It  is 
fresh,  vigorous,  even  somewhat  popular,  in 
themes,  and  characteristically  colored.  The 
orchestration  was  the  envy  of  the  younger  men. 
Italia  was  first  given  in  Munich  in  1887  under 
Strauss.  His  violin  sonata,  opus  18,  was  com- 
posed the  same  year.  Then  followed  fast  the 
series  of  daring  orchestral  frescos  that  placed 
the  name  of  Strauss  at  the  very  forefront  of 
living  composers.  And  yet  how  un-German  his 
music  seems,  hatched  though  it  be  from  the 
very  nest  of  the  classics !  Strauss  is  not  of  the 
same  blood  as  the  Vienna  dance  composers. 
He  has  written  a  valse ;  but  who  could  compare 
the  light,  voluptuous  Danube  music  to  the  ec- 
static scarlet  dance  of  the  Overman  in  Also 
sprach  Zarathustra !  Despite  the  fact  that  it  is 
preceded  only  by  Italia,  Macbeth,  and  Don  Juan, 
Tod  und  Verklarung  gives  us  in  esse  all  the 
overpowering  qualities  of  Strauss,  chiefest  of 
them  being  imagination  without  the  ugliness 
detected  by  sensitive  natures  in  later  composi- 
tions. Death  and  Apotheosis  is  a  masterpiece. 
The  nineteenth  century,  notwithstanding  its 
devotion  to  the  material,  produced  poets  and 
prose  masters  for  whom  death  had  a  peculiar 
predilection.  There  is  the  mystic  Maeterlinck, 
41 


OVERTONES 

with  his  sobbing  shadowgraphs  of  Death  the 
Intruder ;  Tolstoy,  with  his  poignant  picture  of 
the  Death  of  Ivan  Illyitch;  Arnold  Bocklin, 
that  Swiss  master,  who  sang  on  elegiac  can- 
vas his  Toten  Insel ;  and  have  we  not  all 
read  Walt  Whitman  in  his  matchless  threnody 
"When  lilacs  last  in  the  dooryard  bloomed"? 
It  is  not  strange,  then,  that  Strauss,  a  lyric 
philosopher  of  the  same  passionate  pattern  as 
Friedrich  Nietzsche,  should  wrestle  with  a  prob- 
lem as  old  as  eternity.  He  does  wrestle  with 
it  in  his  symphonic  poem  —  attacking  it  in  large 
symbolism,  free  from  the  morbidities  of  the 
decadent  poets ;  accomplishes  it  in  a  way  that 
wrings  the  very  heartstrings. 

It  is  the  spectacle  of  a  sick  man  in  "  a  neces- 
sitous little  chamber"  reviewing  his  struggles 
and  defeats  as  the  fever  cracks  his  veins  and 
throttles  his  life.  He  has  failed  as  failed  Bal- 
zac's Louis  Lambert,  as  fail  all  men  with  lofty 
ideals.  He  has  reached  that  "squat  tower"  of 
defeat,  death,  which  Robert  Browning  chanted 
in  Childe  Roland,  To  the  dark  tower  he  goes, 
and  dauntless  at  the  last,  he  sets  the  slughorn  to 
his  lips  and  blows  victory  in  the  very  teeth  of 
Death.  Perhaps  this  most  modern  of  poems 
gives  the  key  to  the  Strauss  music  better  than 
any  other  in  the  English  tongue.  The  dying 
man  sunken  in  lethargic  slumber,  his  heart 
feebly  beating  in  syncopated  rhythms,  recalls 
his  childhood,  his  lusty  youth,  his  mad  passion 
42 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

for  life  at  its  thickest.  He  toils  and  reaches 
summits  only  to  hear  the  implacable  Halt !  of 
destiny.  Yet  he  continues  to  combat  Fate,  but 
to  be  laid  low.  And  dying,  he  triumphs  ;  for  his 
ideal  lifts  him  to  the  heights,  to  "  Sun-Smitten 
Sunium."  He  has  dared,  and  daring  conquers. 
The  fable  is  old  —  as  old  as  the  Prometheus 
myth.  In  music  we  have  it  incarnated  in  Bee- 
thoven's Fifth  Symphony,  the  tonality  of  which 
—  C  minor,  C  major  —  Strauss  has  adopted. 
Liszt,  too,  in  his  Tasso,  a  symphonic  setting 
of  Goethe's  tragedy,  attempted  the  same  task, 
and  accomplished  it  in  a  brilliant,  spectacular 
fashion.  The  thematic  grouping  of  the  Strauss 
poem  is  simplicity  itself  when  compared  to  the 
towering  architectonics  of  A  Hero's  Life  and 
Thus  spake  Zarathustra.  After  a  lengthy  pro- 
logue in  which  mood,  atmosphere,  Stimmung 
in  a  word,  and  echoes  of  childish  babbling  are 
subtly  contrived,  the  bolt  of  destruction  is  let 
loose,  and  fever,  a  spectre,  courses  through  the 
allegro.  The  Ideal  motive  sounds  but  in  gasp- 
ing, broken  accents.  It  is  only  after  the  delirium 
has  reached  its  climax  that  a  period  of  repose, 
an  analogy  of  the  lyric  period,  is  attained.  The 
childhood  of  the  man  is  lisped  naively ;  youth 
and  its  frolicking  unconsciousness  are  aptly 
portrayed ;  manly  passion  and  conflict  end  the 
section,  for  the  ominous  Halt !  is  blared  out  by 
the  trombones.  The  development  —  as  in  all 
developments  of  this  composer  —  contains  mira- 
43 


OVERTONES 

cles  of  counterpoint  buried  in  passages  of  emo- 
tional splendor.  With  cumulative  power  and 
pathos  we  hear  a  climax  of  imposing  sonorities  ; 
the  marchlike  motive  of  the  Ideal  is  given  in 
all  its  majesty,  and  in  a  C  major  of  rainbow 
riches  the  poem  finishes.  Strauss  has  never 
surpassed  the  plangency  of  coloring,  the  melt- 
ing sweetness  of  this  score.  He  is  more 
philosophic  in  Also  sprach  Zarathustra,  more 
dramatic  in  Don  Juan,  more  heroic  in  Ein 
Heklenleben ;  but  never  has  his  message  been 
so  consoling,  never  has  he  set  so  vividly  over 
his  orchestra  the  arc  of  promise.  That  such 
music  came  forth  from  his  potent  youth  is  a 
prophecy  of  an  astounding  future.  He  is  the 
only  living  issue  in  music  to-day ;  no  other 
master  has  his  stride,  his  stature. 

That  merry  old  rogue's  tune,  Till  Eulenspie- 
gel,  is  a  scherzo-like  rondo  picturing  the  crazy 
pranks  of  the  historic  Tyll  Owlglass.  Its  gro- 
tesque, passionate  melancholy,  tender  violence,  its 
streaks  of  broad  humor  interrupted  by  mocking 
pathos,  its  galloping  down  a  narrow  avenue,  at  the 
end  of  which  looms  the  gibbet,  its  mockery  of 
custom,  flaunting  of  the  Philistine,  and  the  unre- 
pentant death  of  Till,  —  make  it  a  picture  unpar- 
alleled in  music  literature.  Scored  brilliantly, 
the  rondo  leaves  in  its  trail  a  whiff  of  sulphur 
and  violets.  It  is  fantastic  music,  fantastically 
conceived,  fantastically  executed. 

The  score  of  Also  sprach  Zarathustra  is  dated 
44 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

"Begun  February  4;  finished  August  24,  1896. 
Munich.''  The  composer's  words  in  this  connec- 
tion must  be  given  :  — 

"  I  did  not  intend  to  write  philosophical  music 
or  portray  Nietzsche's  great  work  musically.  I 
meant  to  convey  musically  an  idea  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  human  race  from  its  origin,  through 
the  various  phases  of  development,  religious  as 
well  as  scientific,  up  to  Nietzsche's  idea  of  the 
Uebermensch." 

Only  a  musical  epitome  of  the  creative  pro- 
cesses of  the  cosmos  !  The  modesty  of  Strauss 
is  of  a  Michelangelo-like  magnitude.  This  new 
Faust  of  music,  Nietzsche-Strauss,  who  would 
assail  the  very  stars  in  their  courses,  has  written 
some  pages  in  this  opus  that  are  of  imposing 
grandeur.  There  is  an  uplifting  roar  at  the 
opening,  an  effect  of  sunrise — purely  imaginary 
all  these  musical  pictures,  yet  none  the  less 
startling  and  credible  —  as  Zarathustra's  trum- 
pets solemnly  intone  his  motive.  These  tremen- 
dous chords  in  their  naked  simplicity  alone 
proclaim  Strauss  a  man  of  genius  and  give  him 
fee  simple  to  the  symphonic  heritage  of  Beetho- 
ven and  Brahms.  The  A  flat  section  is  notably 
melodious  and  luscious  in  color.  The  five-voiced 
fugue  is  ugly  yet  masterful,  and  the  dance  music 
furious  in  its  abandonment,  corybantic  in  its 
revelry.  Such  laughter  has  never  been  heard 
in  an  orchestra.  The  melodic  curve  is  pas- 
sional. Strauss  is  here  tender,  dramatic,  bizarre, 
45 


OVERTONES 

poetic,  humorous,  ironic,  witty,  wicked  —  sim- 
ple never.  The  noble  art  of  simplicity  he  lacks. 
This  is  the  vastest  and  most  difficult  score 
ever  penned.  It  is  a  cathedral  in  tone,  sublime 
and  fantastic,  with  its  grotesque  gargoyles, 
hideous  flying  abutments,  exquisite  traceries, 
prodigious  arches,  half  gothic,  half  infernal, 
huge  and  resounding  spaces,  gorgeous  facades, 
and  heaven-splitting  spires,  —  a  mighty  musical 
structure !  We  go  to  the  rear-world,  are  in  re- 
ligious transports,  are  swept  on  the  passional 
curves  of  that  fascinating  C  minor  theme  "of 
Joys  and  Passions  "  and  repelled  by  the  fugal  as- 
pect of  Science.  There  is  "  holy  laughter  "  and 
dancing ;  the  dancing  of  the  midget,  man,  in 
the  futile,  furtive  gleam  of  sunshine  that  bridges 
the  Past  and  the  Future  with  the  Present.  Then 
those  twelve  bell  strokes  —  "deep  eternity"  is 
heard  in  the  humming  of  the  metal,  and  the 
close  is  of  enigmatic  tonality.  Nothing  as  auda- 
cious was  ever  penned  by  the  hand  of  man  ■ — 
in  music. 

The  Nature  theme  is  ingeniously  designed 
It  is,  in  the  most  natural  of  tonalities,  C  major, 
and  consists  of  C,  the  fifth,  and  the  octave  above 
it.  The  third  is  missing  out  of  the  chord,  and 
this  makes  the  "  tonal  sex  "  of  the  chord  variable. 
It  is,  says  Merian,  hermaphroditic,  as  is  Nature 
itself.  Major  and  minor  are  not  yet  divided. 
And  the  missing  third  makes  this  theme  one  of 
the  World  Riddle :  "  It  is  the  sphinx  Nature, 
46 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

who  is  staring  at  us  with  empty,  lustreless  eyes, 
inviting  confidence,  yet  awesome." 

In  the  midst  of  the  dancing  orgy  of  joy  sounds 
the  bell  of  midnight.  This  is  the  final  division, 
The  Song  of  the  Night  Wanderer.  Nietzsche, 
in  the  later  editions  of  his  book,  gave  this  chap- 
ter the  heading,  The  Drunken  Song;  and  on 
the  heavy  strokes  of  the  Brummglocke  he  wrote  :  — 

One! 

O  man,  take  heed  I 

Two! 

What  speaks  the  deep  midnight  ? 

Three ! 

I  have  slept,  I  have  slept  — 

Four! 

I  have  awaked  out  of  a  deep  dream — 

Five  ! 

The  world  is  deep, 

Six! 

And  deeper  than  the  day  thought. 

Seven ! 

Deep  in  its  woe  — 

Eight  ! 

Joy,  deeper  still  than  heart  sorrow : 

Nine  ! 

Woe  speaks  :  Vanish  1 

Ten! 

Yet  all  joy  wants  eternity  — 

Eleven  ! 

Wants  deep,  deep  eternity ! 

Twelve  ! 

47 


OVERTONES 

But  Strauss  chooses  this  symbol  as  the  time 
when Zarathustra begins  his  journey  intoeternity. 
The  hour  of  midnight  is  the  hour  of  death,  the 
goal  of  Zarathustra's  career.  This  episode  is 
an  emotional  parallel  to  the  period  when  Zara- 
thustra is  felled  to  earth  with  conflicting  long- 
ings. And  the  Theme  of  Disgust  here  stands 
forth  as  the  Motif  of  Death,  controlling  the 
scene.  Zarathustra's  earthly  death  is  wonder- 
fully translated  into  tone.  The  Theme  of  Death 
struggles  with  that  of  earthly  strife,  and  both 
succumb  in  a  broken  chord  of  C  major.  Then 
without  any  modulation  the  Theme  of  the  Ideal 
sounds  in  B  major  and  the  transfiguration  is 
achieved.  Again  there  is  a  faint  reminiscent 
plea  of  the  conquered  themes.  The  Theme  of 
the  Ideal  sways  aloft  in  the  higher  regions  in  B 
major;  the  trombones  insist  on  the  cryptic  un- 
resolved chord  of  C-E-F  sharp ;  and  in  the 
double  basses  and  celli  is  repeated  C-G-C  —  the 
World  Riddle.  Emil  Paur,  ever  an  ardent 
Strauss  pioneer,  produced  Also  sprach  Zarathu- 
stra in  New  York,  December,  1897. 

In  W.  B.  Yeats's  Ideas  of  Good  and  Evil, 
there  appears  this  characteristic  passage  :  "  Have 
not  poetry  and  music  arisen,  as  it  seems,  out  of 
the  sounds  the  enchanters  made  to  help  their 
imagination  to  enchant,  to  charm,  to  bind  with 
a  spell  themselves  and  the  passers-by  ?  These 
very  words,  a  chief  part  of  all  praises  of  music 
or  poetry,  still  cry  to  us  their  origin."  The 
48 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

Irish  mystic  poet  is  writing  of  magic,  and  I  can- 
not help  applying  his  words  to  Richard  Strauss, 
who  is  the  initiator  of  new  art.  After  hearing 
his  Till  Eulenspiegel  conducted  by  the  com- 
poser, I  was  more  than  ever  impressed  by  the 
idea  that  Strauss  is  diverting  music  into  psycho- 
logic channels,  moulding  its  plastic  forms  into 
shapes  that  are  really  vital,  so  intense  is  their 
personal  appeal.  Since  primitive  man  howled 
his  lays  to  the  moon,  the  art  of  music  has  be- 
come in  every  age  more  and  more  definitive  ; 
even  the  classic  masters  were  not  content  to 
play  alone  with  tonal  arabesques,  but  sought  to 
impress  upon  their  bars  a  definite  mood.  In 
Beethoven  the  passion  for  articulating  his  mean- 
ings literally  re-created  music.  When  Wag- 
ner found  that  he  had  nothing  new  to  say,  he 
resorted  to  an  old  device  —  he  wedded  his  music 
to  words.  Richard  Strauss  has  now  taken  up 
the  chain,  the  last  links  of  which  were  so  pa- 
tiently forged  by  Franz  Liszt.  He  has  at  his 
command  all  the  old  enchantments  of  music ; 
he  can  woo  and  ravish  the  ear  and  command 
the  tempests;  but  this  is  not  enough.  He  would 
have  his  message  still  more  articulate.  He  is  a 
thinker,  a  philosopher  as  well  as  a  poet,  and 
deeply  religious  in  the  cosmical  sense ;  he  pur- 
poses no  less  a  task  than  the  complete  subju- 
gation of  men's  imagination.  Notes,  phrases, 
groups,  movements,  masses  of  tone  are  no 
longer  merely  sensuous  symbols,  but  the  actual 
e  49 


OVERTONES 

symbols  of  a  language ;  we  must  hasten  to 
learn  the  new  speech,  which  relates  in  wonderful 
tones  wonderful  things.  Tschai'kowsky  aimed 
at  this  definiteness,  but  his  passionate,  emotional 
nature  clouded  the  workings  of  his  intellect. 
Strauss,  too,  has  had  the  seven  devils  of  sensu- 
ality in  his  mansion,  but  has  exorcised  them  by 
sheer  force  of  a  great  spiritual  nature  —  the 
man  is  a  spiritualist,  a  seer  in  the  broader  mean- 
ings of  these  much-worn  terms.  The  vision  of 
approaching  death  in  his  Don  Quixote  could 
have  been  conceived  only  by  one  for  whom  life 
and  the  universe  itself  were  symbols,  the  living 
garment  by  which  we  apprehend  the  Deity. 

In  our  shrewd  categories  of  things  intellectual 
and  things  emotional,  we  partition  off  too  sharply 
brain  and  feeling,  soul  and  body.  Life  is  not  a 
proposition  by  Euclid ;  nor  is  art.  It  is  one  of 
the  functions  of  music  to  make  us  feel,  another 
to  make  us  think ;  the  greatest  masters  are 
ever  those  who  make  us  both  feel  and  think  in 
one  vivid  moment.  This  Beethoven  has  done, 
Wagner  has  done,  and  now  Richard  Strauss. 
You  cannot  call  his  music  frigidly  intellectual, 
as  is  often  the  music  of  Brahms,  nor  does  it 
relapse  into  such  debauches  of  frenetic  passion 
as  Tscha'ikowsky's — the  imperial  intellect  of 
Strauss  controls  his  temperament.  He  is,  like 
Nietzsche,  a  lyric  philosopher,  but  never,  like 
Nietzsche,  will  he  allow  the  problems  of  life 
and  art  to  overthrow  his  reason.  In  the  thunders 
50 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

of  his  scores,  I  seem  to  hear  the  annunciation 
of  a  new  dispensation,  of  a  new  evangel  of  art 
which  shall  preach  the  beauty  of  the  soul  and 
the  beauty  of  body ;  life  on  the  other  side  of 
good  and  evil. 

There  are  many  to  whom  Richard  Strauss's 
tone-poem  Ein  Heldenleben  proved  musically 
baneful.  Yet  Strauss  wears  no  mask.  His  own 
musical  lineaments,  convulsed  in  passion's  gri- 
mace, exultant  with  grandiose  dreams,  or  distorted 
by  deadly  rage,  are  the  naked  expression  of  his 
fantastic  soul.  And  to  the  orthodox  his  con- 
tempt for  clear  tonalities,  his  mockery  of  the 
very  harmonic  foundations  of  the  art,  his  jug- 
gling with  bizzare  rhythms — in  a  word,  his 
avoidance  of  the  normal,  the  facile,  the  smug, 
and  the  unoriginal,  is  as  great  a  crime  against 
ethics  as  the  lucidly  insane  proclamations  of 
the  Master  Immoralist,  Friedrich  Nietzsche. 
Repeated  hearings  convince  one  regarding 
Strauss's  sincerity.  He  is  working  out  his  own 
artistic  salvation  on  his  own  premeditated  lines. 
He  is  the  solitary  soul  of  Hauptmann,  and  he 
is  doomed  to  mockery  until  he  is  understood. 

It  is  impossible  to  escape  the  compelling  mag- 
netism of  the  man  from  Munich.  He  is  still 
young,  still  in  his  storm  and  stress  period. 
When  the  time  for  clarification  comes,  Strauss 
in  this  final  analysis  will  emerge  a  very  big 
man.  His  Hero's  Life  has  its  ugly  spots  — 
51 


OVERTONES 

critics  and  criticism  are  objectified  in  a  cruelly 
sardonic  fashion  —  and  that  battlefield  will 
remain  for  this  generation  either  sheer  brutal 
noise  or  else  the  forefront  of  the  higher  Eesthet- 
icism  in  music.  One  way  or  the  other  it  matters 
little  ;  the  reputation  of  Strauss  will  not  stand  or 
fall  by  this  poem.  The  main  thing  to  record 
is  the  overwhelming  impression  of  power,  anar- 
chistic if  you  will,  that  informs  Ein  Helden- 
leben.  And  all  the  more  disquieting  is  the 
discovery  that  this  Wizard  of  Dreams  wears  no 
antique  musical  mask  —  his  own  is  tragic  and 
significant  enough. 

And  let  it  be  said  that  for  conventional  pro- 
gramme music  Strauss  has  ever  manifested  a 
violent  aversion.  The  only  clew  he  gives  to  his 
work  is  the  title.  Some  commentators  do  the 
most  mischief,  for  they  read  into  this  music 
every  imaginable  meaning.  It  is  then  as  ab- 
solute music  that  Ein  Heldenleben  may  be 
criticised,  though  the  names  of  the  various 
subdivisions  give  the  hearer,  if  not  a  key,  at 
least  notion  of  the  emotional  trend  of  this  com- 
position. This  is  the  way  Richard  Strauss  has 
outlined  the  scheme  of  his  E  flat  Symphony, 
opus  40,  his  Eroica:  — 

I.  The  Hero.  II.  The  Hero's  Antagonists. 
III.  The  Hero's  Consort.  IV.  The  Hero's 
Battlefield.  V.  The  Hero's  Work  of  Peace. 
VI.  The  Hero's  Retirement  from  Worldly  Life 
and  Strife  and  Ultimate  Perfection.  It  must 
52 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

be  remembered  that  this  is  a  purely  arbitrary 
arrangement,  for  in  the  formal  sense  the  ground 
plan  of  the  symphony  would  be  thus  :  The  first 
three  sections  contain  the  thematic  statements ; 
the  next  two  —  parts  four  and  five  —  are  devoted 
to  the  exposition  or  free  fantasia ;  the  last  is  a 
highly  elaborate  summing  up  or  coda.  Here 
is  the  symphonic  form  in  an  attenuated  shape, 
the  chief  novelty  being  the  introduction  in  part 
five  —  or  second  division  of  the  working-out  sec- 
tion of  new  thematic  material,  modest  quotations 
from  the  Strauss  earlier  symphonic  works. 
There  can  then  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  identity 
of  the  protagonist  of  this  drama-symphony — it 
is  the  glorified  image  of  Richard  Strauss. 
This  latter  exploitation  of  personality  need  not 
distress  us  unnecessarily ;  Strauss  but  follows 
in  the  footsteps  of  Walt  Whitman  and  of  his 
own  contemporaries — Rodin,  the  sculptor; 
Gabriel  d'Annunzio,  in  II  Fuoco ;  Nietzsche,  in 
Zarathustra  ;  Tolstoy,  in  all  his  confessions  —  de- 
spite their  inverted  humility  ;  Wagner,  in  Meis- 
tersinger ;  Franz  Stuck,  the  Munich  painter, 
whose  portrait  of  his  own  eccentric  self  is  not 
the  least  of  his  work.  Strauss  might  appre- 
ciatively quote  Walt  Whitman  :  "  Am  I  of 
mighty  Manhattan  the  son  ? "  as  a  justification 
of  what  paradoxically  could  be  called  his  objec- 
tive egotism.  But  the  composer  not  only  deifies 
the  normal  man,  he  shadows  forth  Nietzsche's 
supernormal  humanity.  He  is  a  very  Victor 
53 


OVERTONES 

Hugo  in  his  colossal  egotism,  yet  he  names  it 
the  ego  of  mankind.  So  avoiding  all  this 
pother  of  philosophy  and  aesthetics,  one  is 
forced  to  return  to  the  music  as  poetic  music. 

The  Hero  theme  is  Beethovian  in  its  diatonic 
majesty  —  the  entire  section  has  a  Beethoven 
color,  despite  its  dissonantal  interruptions  — 
while  the  second  section,  an  amiable  picture  of 
the  composer's  adversaries,  suggests  in  a  tritu- 
rated manner  the  irony,  caricature,  and  bur- 
lesque spirit  of  Till  Eulenspiegel.  His  critical 
adversaries  are  represented  as  a  snarling,  sorry 
crew,  with  acrid  and  acrimonious  souls,  duly 
set  forth  by  the  woodwind  instruments,  chiefly 
the  oboe ;  there  is  also  a  horrid  sounding 
phrase,  empty  fifths  for  tenor  and  bass  tuba. 
Then  the  hero's  wife  is  pictured  by  the  solo 
violin.  It  is  very  feminine.  It  mounts  in  pas- 
sion and  interest  with  the  duologue.  After 
that — chaos!  It  is  but  the  developing  of  the 
foregoing  motives.  And  such  an  exposition,  it 
is  safe  to  say,  has  never  been  heard  since  sauri- 
ans  roared  in  the  steaming  marshes  of  the 
young  planet,  or  when  prehistoric  man  met  in 
multitudinous  and  shrieking  combat.  Yet  the  web 
is  polyphonically  spun  —  spun  magnificently. 
This  battle  scene  is  full  of  unmitigated  horror. 
One  knows  that  it  is  the  free  fantasia,  but  such  a 
one  has  never  been  conceived  before  by  the  mind 
of  man.  A  battle  is  not  a  peaceful  or  a  pleasant 
place,  especially  a  modern  battlefield.  You 
54 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

can  dimly,  after  several  hearings,  thread  the 
thematic  mazes,  but  so  discordant  are  the  oppos- 
ing tonalities,  so  screaming  the  harmonies,  and 
so  highly  pitched  the  dynamic  scheme,  that  the 
normal  ear,  thus  rudely  assaulted,  becomes  be- 
wildered and  finally  insensitive.  Strauss  has 
not  a  normal  ear.  His  is  the  most  marvelous 
agglomeration  of  cortical  cells  that  science  has 
ever  recorded.  So  acute  are  his  powers  of 
acoustical  differentiation  that  he  must  hear,  not 
alone  tones  beyond  the  base  and  the  top  of  the 
normal  scale  unheard  of  by  ordinary  humans, 
but  he  must  also  hear,  or,  rather,  overhear,  the 
vibratory  waves  from  all  individual  sounds.  His 
music  gives  us  the  impression  of  new  overtones, 
of  scales  that  violate  the  well  tempered,  of  tonal- 
ities that  approximate  to  the  quarter-tones  of 
Oriental  music.  And  yet  there  is,  besides  the 
barbaric  energy  displayed,  grandeur  in  the  con- 
ception of  this  extraordinary  battle  piece.  It 
evokes  the  picture  of  countless  and  waging 
hosts ;  of  forests  of  waving  spears  and  clashing 
blades.  The  din,  heat,  and  turmoil  of  conflict 
are  spread  over  all  and  the  ground  piled  high 
with  the  slain. 

It  is  all  too  intricate  to  grasp  at  several  hear- 
ings, though  it  may  become  child's  play  for 
the  next  generation.  Richard  Wagner's  case 
must  not  be  forgotten  at  this  point.  So  com- 
plex is  the  counterpoint  of  Strauss  that  one  of 
his  commentators  recommends  the  all  but  impos- 
55 


OVERTONES 

sible  feat  of  listening  to  it  horizontally  and  verti- 
cally. In  the  fifth  part  we  hear  themes  from  the 
composer's  Don  Juan,  Macbeth,  Death  and 
Apotheosis,  Till  Eulenspiegel,  Zarathustra,  Don 
Quixote,  Guntram,  and  his  lovely  song,  Traum 
durch  die  Dammerung.  With  the  coda,  after 
some  sinister  retrospection  of  an  agitated  life, 
comes  peace,  pastoral,  soul-renewing.  And  the 
big  E  flat  chord  that  closes  the  volume  is  worth 
the  entire  composition.  It  is  the  most  magnifi- 
cent and  imposing  rainbow  of  tone  that  ever 
spanned  the  harmonic  heavens.  Not  Wagner's 
wonderful  C  major  chord,  which  begins  the 
Meistersinger  overture,  is  comparable  to  the 
iridescence  of  this  Uebermenscti s  sonorous  vale- 
dictory. Strauss  has  not  hesitated  to  annex 
some  themes  from  Parsifal  and  Tristan ;  there 
is,  indeed,  much  Wagner  in  the  score.  But  do 
not  call  this  man  a  madman,  a  decadent  —  unless 
by  decadent  you  mean  the  expression  in  its  liter- 
ary sense  as  in  an  undue  devotion  to  the  letter 
at  the  expense  of  the  word,  phrase,  sentence, 
paragraph,  page,  chapter,  and  book.  He  has 
great  energy,  great  power  of  concentration ; 
and  his  critics  —  those  he  so  caustically  portrays 
as  snarling  and  cynical  in  his  very  Till-Eulen- 
spiegel-like  second  section  —  those  critics,  we 
repeat,  must  admit  the  man's  skill  in  scoring,  in 
contrapuntal  mastery.  Whether  all  this  monu- 
mental labor  is  worth  the  trouble;  whether  the 
very  noticeable  disproportion  —  spiritual  and 
56 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

physical  —  between  the  themes  and  their  hand- 
ling ;  whether  these  things  are  to  defy  estab- 
lished canonic  conventions  and  live  by  virtue  of 
their  characteristic  truth  and  tonal  beauty,  —  are 
considerations  I  gratefully  relinquish  to  the  next 
generation.  Naturally  there  is  repellent  music 
in  the  score ;  but  then  the  neo-realists  insist  on 
truth,  not  on  the  pursuit  of  vague  and  deco- 
rative beauty.  It  is  the  characteristic  versus  the 
ornamental ;  and  who  shall  dare  predict  its 
future  success  or  extinction  ?  One  thing  must 
be  insisted  upon  —  the  absolute  abandonment  of 
the  old  musical  ideal,  else  Strauss  and  his  ten- 
dencies go  by  the  board.  The  well-sounding, 
the  poetic,  —  in  the  romantic  sense,  —  are  thrown 
to  the  winds  in  this  monstrous  orgy ;  an  organ- 
ized orgy  in  the  Balzac  meaning  of  the  phrase 
—  for  Strauss  is  only  mad  north-northwest,  and 
can  always  tell  a  harmonic  hawk  from  a  hern- 
shaw.  In  his  most  delirious  moments  he  remem- 
bers his  orchestral  palette.  And  what  a  gorgeous, 
horrible  color  scheme  is  his !  He  has  a  taste 
for  sour  progressions,  and  every  voice  in  his 
orchestral  family  is  forced  to  sing  impossible 
and  wicked  things.  He  owes  much  to  Beethoven, 
Berlioz,  Liszt,  and  Wagner,  —  the  Wagner  of 
Tristan  and  Parsifal,  —  and  often  he  compasses 
both  beauty  and  grandeur. 

The  Strauss  tone-poems  are  dramas  without 
words.     What  Tschai'kowsky  so  eloquently  exe- 
57 


OVERTONES 

cuted  as  single  figures  in  the  character  studies  of 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  Francescada  Rimini,  Hamlet, 
and  Manfred,  Richard  Strauss  expands  to  the 
compass  of  a  psychical  tonal  drama,  dispensing 
with  words,  with  actions,  with  the  machinery  of 
the  stage,  just  as  the  great  masters  of  fiction  sup- 
planted the  makers  of  epics  and  their  supernatu- 
ral furniture  by  a  synthesis  in  which  action, 
dialogue,  description,  comment,  are  melted  into 
homogeneous  narrative.  Every  instrument  in  the 
Strauss  orchestra  is  an  actor  that  speaks  its 
lines  solo  or  during  an  amazing  polyphony. 
After  Don  Quixote  one  need  not  be  told  that 
Strauss  is  not  a  mere  Tintoretto  of  the  orchestra  ; 
he  is,  I  am  not  loath  to  repeat,  both  painter 
and  psychologist.  As  the  greatest  narrator  in 
modern  prose  is  Gustave  Flaubert,  so  Richard 
Strauss  is  the  greatest  of  musical  narrators. 
There  is  no  longer  any  question  of  form  in  the 
classic  sense ;  every  music  symbol  and  device 
hitherto  known  in  the  art  of  music  is  utilized 
and  reenforced  by  the  invention  of  numberless 
methods  for  driving  home  to  the  imagination 
the  Old-World  tale  of  Don  Quixote  and  his  squire. 
It  may  be  objected  here  that  the  story  of  Cer- 
vantes should  suffice  without  any  of  the  sonorous 
exfoliations  of  this  composer.  Very  true.  But 
Strauss  only  uses  Don  Quixote  as  he  uses  Zara- 
thustra  or  Don  Juan,  as  a  type  of  something  that 
may  be  discovered  in  all  humanity.  Don  Quixote 
the  perfect  dreamer  may  be  the  Knight  of  Cer- 
58 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

vantes  or  our  next-door  neighbor.  More  terrible 
still,  he  may  be  our  true  self  masked  by  the  dull 
garb  of  life's  quotidian  struggle  for  bread  !  And 
to  offset  the  fantasy  of  the  knight  we  have  the 
homely  wisdom  of  Sancho  Panza,  who,  having 
barked  his  shins  as  well  as  warmed  them  at  the 
grate  of  life,  always  speaks  by  the  card.  A 
sensible  fool,  he  is  not  understood  by  the  fool- 
ish sensitivist,  the  poet  who  looks  aloft  and  there- 
fore misses  the  prizes  beloved  of  most  men. 

Why  is  not  this  a  theme  fit  for  musical  devel- 
opment ?  It  has  every  element  dear  to  the  heart 
of  the  poetic  composer  —  fantasy,  poetry,  broad, 
obvious  humor,  realism,  nobility  of  idea,  and  an 
almost  infinite  number  of  surfaces  fit  for  the 
loving  brush  of  a  master  painter.  Then  there  is 
the  psychology.  Don  Quixote,  half-mad,  chival- 
ric  withal,  must  be  depicted ;  as  a  counterfoil 
the  obese  humors  of  Sancho  Panza  are  ready  for 
celebration.  After  subjecting  this  pair  to  the 
minutest  musical  scrutiny,  their  voyages  and  ad- 
ventures must  be  duly  set  forth.  It  is  evident 
that  here  we  are  confronted  by  many  difficulties. 
It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  mere  musicianship. 
Form  is  a  thing  of  the  grammarians,  to  be  dis- 
cussed behind  closed  doors  by  persons  who 
believe  in  musty  counterpoint  and  the  rules  of 
the  game.  A  great  vital  imagination,  defying 
alike  gods  and  men  and  capable  of  shaping 
his  dreams,  a  man  of  humor,  malice,  irony,  above 
all  else  irony,  tenderness,  pity,  and  the  marrow 
59 


OVERTONES 

of  life,  love,  —  all  these  qualities,  plus  an  infernal 
(or  celestial  if  you  like  the  word  better)  science, 
must  the  composer  of  a  Don  Quixote  possess. 

Strauss  calls  his  work  "  Fantastic  variations 
on  a  theme,  of  knightly  character."  For  the 
benefit  of  the  musically  pious  let  me  add  that  it 
is  in  the  form  —  broadly — of  a  Thema  con 
Variazione  and  Finale.  Therein  Strauss  may 
be  said  to  mock  his  own  idealism,  as  Heine  and 
Nietzsche  once  mocked  theirs.  The  realism  is 
after  all  a  realism  of  fantasy  ;  for  the  narrative 
deals  with  what  the  Knight  of  the  Rueful  Coun- 
tenance imagined  and  with  what  his  trusty  squire 
thought  of  him.  With  his  characteristic  flair  for 
an  apt  subject,  Strauss  recognized  in  the  semi- 
dream-life  of  Don  Quixote  a  theme  pat  for 
treatment  —  and  how  he  has  treated  it!  That 
magnificent  gift  of  irony,  inherent  in  every  sen- 
tence he  utters,  here  expands  in  a  soil  worthy  of 
it.  A  garden  of  curious  and  beautiful  flowers — ■ 
flowers  of  evil  as  well  as  good  —  blooms  in  this 
score.  Its  close  contains  some  affecting  and 
noble  pages,  as  affecting  as  TschaTkowsky's,  as 
dignified  and  dramatic  as  Richard  Wagner's. 
There  is  no  interruption  in  the  different  sections. 
Don  Quixote  is  "enacted"  by  the  solo  violon- 
cello, the  viola  represents  Sancho  Panza.  (Per- 
haps Strauss  indulged  in  a  sly  witticism  at  the 
expense  of  the  romantic  Berlioz  and  his  viola 
solo  in  Harold  in  Italy.)  We  first  see  —  some 
hear,  others  see  —  Don  Quixote  reading  crack- 
60 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

brained  romances  of  chivalry.  There  are 
themes  grandiose,  mock  heroic  and  crazy  in 
their  gallantry.  Queer  harmonies  from  time 
to  time  indicate  the  profound  mental  disturbance 
of  the  knight.  He  envisages  the  ideal  woman  ; 
giants  attack  her  ;  he  rushes  to  the  rescue.  The 
muting  of  the  instruments,  tuba  included,  pro- 
duces the  idea  of  slow-creeping  madness  and  a 
turbulent  comminglement  of  ideas.  Suddenly 
his  reason  goes,  and  with  a  crazy  glissando  on 
the  harps  and  a  mutilated  version  of  the  knightly 
theme  the  unfortunate  man  becomes  quite  mad. 
From  music  to  madness  is  but  a  step  after  all. 
Don  Quixote  is  now  Knight  Errant. 

Then  follows,  after  a  new  theme  rich  in  char- 
acterization, the  theme  of  Sancho  Panza,  for  the 
bass  clarinet  and  bass  tuba  ;  later  always  on  the 
viola.  The  fat  shoulders,  big  paunch,  the  mean, 
good-natured,  lying,  gluttonous,  constant  fellow 
are  limned  with  the  startling  fidelity  that  Gus- 
tave  Dore  or  Daniel  Vierge  attained  —  for  music 
can  give  the  sense  of  motion  ;  it  is  par  excel- 
lence the  art  of  narration. 

The  ten  variations  which  ensue  are  master- 
pieces. We  no  longer  ask  for  the  normal  eight- 
bar  euphonious  melody,  for  the  equable  distribu- 
tion of  harmonies,  for  order,  rhythm,  mass,  and 
logic ;  but,  with  suspense  unconcealed,  follow 
the  line  of  the  story,  amazed,  delighted,  per- 
plexed, angered,  piqued,  interested  —  always 
interested  by  the  magic  of  the  narrator.  The 
61 


OVERTONES 

adventure  with  the  windmills  ;  the  victorious 
battle  against  the  host  of  the  great  emperor 
Alifanfaron ;  dialogues  of  Knight  and  Squire ; 
the  meeting  with  the  Penitents  and  the  Knight's 
overthrow ;  his  vigil ;  the  encounter  with  his 
Dulcinea  ;  the  ride  through  the  air  ;  the  journey 
in  the  enchanted  boat ;  the  conflict  with  the  two 
magicians  ;  the  combat  with  the  Knight  of  the 
Silver  Moon  ;  and  the  overthrow  of  Don  Quixote 
and  his  death,  —  are  so  many  canvases  upon 
which  are  painted  with  subtle,  broad,  ironic, 
and  nai've  colors  the  memorable  history  hereto- 
fore hinted  at.  The  realistic  effects,  notably 
the  use  of  the  wind  machine  in  Variation  VII, 
are  not  distasteful.  Muted  brass  in  Variation 
II  suggests  the  plaintive  m-a-a-h-s  of  a  herd  of 
sheep.  The  grunting  of  pigs,  crowing  of 
roosters,  roaring  of  lions,  and  hissing  of  snakes 
were  crudely  imitated  by  the  classic  masters  ; 
while  in  the  Wagner  music-dramas  may  be  dis- 
covered quite  a  zoological  collection.  Nor  is  the 
wind  machine  so  formidable  as  it  is  said  to  be. 
It  is  an  effect  utilized  to  represent  the  imaginary 
flight  through  the  air  in  a  wild  gale  of  Knight 
and  Squire  on  a  wooden  Pegasus.  We  know 
that  it  is  pure  imagination,  for  the  growling 
tremolo  of  the  double  basses  on  one  note  tells 
the  listener  that  the  solid  earth  has  really  never 
been  abandoned. 

Throughout,  there  are  many  ravishing  touches 
of  tenderness,  of  sincere  romance ;  and  the  finale 
62 


RICHARD    STRAUSS 

is  very  pathetic.  His  reason  returns  —  wonder- 
fully described  —  and  the  poor,  lovable  Knight, 
recognizing  his  aberration,  passes  gently  away. 
Here  Strauss  utilizes  a  device  as  old  as  the 
hills,  and  one  heard  in  the  B  minor  symphony  of 
Tschai'kowsky.  It  is  sort  of  a  basso  ostinato, 
the  tympani  obstinately  tapping  a  tone  as  the 
soul  of  the  much-tried  man  takes  flight.  Per- 
haps the  accents  of  a  deep-seated  pessimism 
may  be  overheard  here  —  for  I  believe  Richard 
Strauss  too  great  a  nature  to  remain  content 
with  his  successes.  He  recalls  to  me  in  this 
poem  the  little  mezzotint  of  John  Martin,  where 
Sadak  in  search  of  the  waters  of  oblivion  pain- 
fully creeps  over  the  cruel  edges  of  terrifying 
abysses  to  misty  heights,  upon  which  still  more 
appalling  dangers  await  the  intrepid  soul. 

Strauss  has  only  reached  the  midway  of  his 
mortal  life.  A  stylist,  a  realist  in  his  treat- 
ment of  his  orchestral  hosts,  a  psychologist 
among  psychologists,  a  master  of  a  new  and 
generous  culture,  a  thinker,  above  all  an  inter- 
preter of  poetic  and  heroic  types  of  humanity, 
who  shall  say  to  him  :  Dare  no  further !  His 
audacity  is  only  equalled  by  his  mental  serenity. 
In  all  the  fury  of  his  fantasy  his  intelligence  is 
sovereign  over  its  kingdom. 


63 


II 


PARSIFAL:    A    MYSTIC    MELO- 
DRAMA 

I  will  open  my  dark  saying  upon  the  harp. 

—  Psalm  xlix. 

When  a  certain  famous  Wagner  conductor 
was  in  New  York  not  long  ago,  he  related  to 
musical  friends  an  astonishing  story.  He  had 
seen,  he  declared,  the  manuscript  autobiography 
of  Richard  Wagner  at  Wahnfried,  in  Bayreuth, 
which  is  to  remain  unpublished  until  the  expira- 
tion of  a  certain  period.  This  conductor  did 
not  hesitate  to  clear  up  a  mystery  that,  neverthe- 
less, has  been  an  open  secret  in  Germany  for 
many  years  —  Wagner's  parentage.  The  con- 
ductor said  that  Wagner  admitted  he  was  the 
son  of  Ludwig  Geyer.  Ludwig  Geyer,  painter, 
poet,  dramatist,  composer,  actor,  stage  manager, 
—  a  versatile  man  in  everything,  —  was  of  Hebraic 
ancestry.  Wagner,  therefore,  had  a  moiety  of 
the  blood,  and  his  son  Siegfried  more  than  his 
father,  for  Cosima  Liszt  (von  Biilow)  Wagner's 
maternal  grandparents  were  the  Jewish  bankers 
Bethmannof  Frankfort-on-the-Main.  Mr.  Henry 
T.  Finck  —  whose  Wagner  biography  still  re- 
64 


PARSIFAL 

mains  the  standard  one  in  the  language — once 
remarked  upon  the  fact  that  at  Wahnfried,  Bay- 
reuth,  the  pictures  of  Wagner's  mother  and 
Ludwig  Geyer  may  be  seen,  but  that  of  his 
reputed  father  is  not  on  view.  Nietzsche,  often 
a  prejudiced  witness  when  his  antipathies  are 
aroused,  wrote  :  "  Was  Wagner  German  at  all  ? 
We  have  some  reasons  for  asking  this.  It  is 
difficult  to  discern  in  him  any  German  trait 
whatsoever.  Being  a  great  learner,  he  has 
learned  to  imitate  much  that  is  German  —  that 
is  all.  His  character  itself  is  in  opposition  to 
what  has  been  hitherto  regarded  as  German  — 
not  to  speak  of  the  German  musician !  His 
father  was  a  stage  player  named  Geyer.  A 
Geyer  is  almost  an  Adler  —  Geyer  and  Adler 
are  both  names  of  Jewish  families."  The  above 
was  written  about  1 887-1 888.  Setting  aside 
the  statement  that  Wagner  was  un-German  as 
meaningless,  —  men  of  genius  are  generally 
strangers  to  their  nation,  —  the  other  assertion 
only  shows  that  Nietzsche  was  in  possession  of 
the  secret.  He  was  an  intimate  of  the  Wagner 
household  and  knew  its  history. 

And  what  does  this  prove  ?  Only  that  the 
genius  of  Richard  Wagner,  tinctured  with  Ori- 
ental blood,  betrayed  itself  in  the  magnificence 
of  his  pictorial  imagination,  in  the  splendor  of 
his  music,  in  its  color,  glow,  warmth,  and 
rhythmic  intensity.  It  also  accounts  for  his 
pertinacity,  his  dislike  of  Meyerbeer  and  Heine 
f  65 


OVERTONES 

and  Mendelssohn.  He  was  essentially  a  man  of 
the  theatre,  as  was  Meyerbeer,  though  loftier  in 
his  aims,  while  not  so  gifted  melodically.  In 
sooth,  he  owes  much  to  the  Meyerbeer  opera 
and  the  Scribe  libretto,  —  Scribe,  who  really  con- 
structed one  of  the  first  viable  dramatic  books 
—  withal  old-fashioned  —  for  musical  setting. 

And  nothing  is  more  useless  than  to  pin 
Wagner  down  to  his  every  utterance  in  poem  or 
speech.  As  Bernard  Shaw  has  acutely  pointed 
out,  Wagner  —  versatile,  mercurial,  wonderful 
Wagner — was  a  different  being  every  hour  of 
the  day.  He  explained  matters  to  suit  his  mood 
of  the  moment, — a  Schopenhauerian  one  hour, 
a  semi-Christian  the  next.  Liszt,  Glasenapp, 
Heckel,  Feustel,  all  show  different  portraits  of 
this  man.  A  German  democrat  he  was  —  and  a 
courtier,  an  atheist,  and  yet  a  mystic.  Wagner 
was  all  things  to  all  men,  like  men  of  his  supple 
imagination. 

He  abused  conductors  for  playing  excerpts 
from  his  music  in  concert,  and  then  conducted 
concerts  devoted  to  his  own  works.  He  wrote 
pamphlets  on  every  subject,  and  with  the  pre- 
rogative of  genius  contradicted  them  in  other 
pamphlets.  He  was  not  always  a  Wagnerian, 
and  at  times  he  differed  with  himself  in  the 
interpretation  of  his  compositions.  He  was  a 
genius  beset  by  volatile  moods,  a  very  busy 
man  of  affairs,  and  a  much-suffering  creature. 
Wandering  about  the  world  for  a  half-century 
66 


PARSIFAL 

did  not  improve  his  temper,  and  yet  next  to 
Nietzsche  there  is  no  one  whose  judgments  on 
Wagner's  music  I  would  regard  with  more  sus- 
picion than —  Richard  Wagner's.  He  was  a  born 
satirist.  He  loved  to  play  practical  jokes,  and 
it  would  not  be  surprising  if  some  day  we  should 
learn  that  Parsifal  was  one  of  his  jokes  on  an 
epical  scale.  Remember  how  he  mocked  Mozart 
and  Beethoven  and  the  symphonic  form  in  his 
own  C  major  symphony,  as  if  to  say,  "I,  too, 
can  cover  the  symphonic  canvas  !  "  No,  Wagner 
is  a  dangerous  authority  to  quote  upon  Wagner. 
Though  Liszt  was  only  two  years  older  than 
Wagner,  he  was  a  musician  of  experience  when 
Wagner  was  still  a  youth.  While  at  the  age  of 
eighteen  Wagner  published  his  first  sonata, 
opus  i,  which  was  written  under  the  direct  in- 
fluence of  Haydn  and  Mozart,  Liszt  at  the  same 
age  had  already  sketched  a  great  revolutionary 
symphony,  the  slow  movement  of  which,  on 
Liszt's  own  showing,  has  survived  in  his  eighth 
symphonic  poem,  Heroi'de  Funebre.  By  refer- 
ence to  these  two  early  works,  it  is  easy  to  de- 
termine which  of  these  two  masters  was  the  first 
to  open  up  new  paths.  Similarly  we  find  that, 
during  the  Rienzi  period,  Liszt  had  already 
adopted  new  forms  for  his  compositions  of  that 
date.  In  Wagner's  later  works  there  often 
appear  themes  which  note  for  note  have  been 
anticipated  by  Liszt.  Compare,  for  their  thematic 
formation,  musical  construction,  and  general 
67 


OVERTONES 

/  coloring,  Orpheus  and  Tristan  and  Isolde,  the 
Faust  symphony  and  Tristan,  the  Faust  sym- 
phony and  Die  Walkiire,  Benediction  de  Dieu 
dans  le  Solitude  and  Isolde's  Liebestod,  Die 
Ideale  and  the  Ring,  —  Das  Rheingold  in  par- 
ticular,—  Invocation  and  Parsifal,  Hunnenschlact 
and  Kundry-Ritt,  The  Legend  of  Saint  Elizabeth 
and  Parsifal,  Christus  and  Parsifal,  Excelsior 
and  Parsifal,  not  to  mention  many  others. 

The  principal  theme  of  the  Faust  symphony 
is  to  be  found  in  Die  Walkiire,  and  one  of  its 
most  characteristic  themes  appears  note  for  note 
as  the  Blick  motive  in  Tristan  and  Isolde.  The 
Gretchen  motive  in  Wagner's  A  Faust  Over- 
ture is  also  derived  from  Liszt,  and  the  opening 
theme  of  the  Parsifal  prelude  closely  follows 
the  earlier  written  Excelsior  of  Liszt.  It  was 
during  a  rehearsal  at  Bayreuth  in  1876  that 
Wagner  suddenly  seized  Liszt  by  the  arm  and 
exclaimed,  "  Now,  papa,  here  comes  a  theme 
which  I  got  from  you!"  "All  right,"  replied 
the  amiable  Liszt,  "  one  will  then  at  least  hear 
it."  The  theme  in  question  is  the  one  in  the 
fifth  scene  of  the  second  act,  which  serves  to 
introduce  and  accompany  Sieglinde's  dream- 
words,  "  Kehrte  der  Vater  nun  heim  ?  "  This 
theme  —  see  page  179  of  Kleinmichael's  piano 
score  —  appears  at  the  beginning  of  Liszt's 
Faust  symphony,  which  Wagner  had  heard  at 
a  festival  of  the  Allgemeiner  Deutscher  Musik 
Verein  in  1861,  and  during  which  he  burst  forth 
68 


PARSIFAL 

with  these  words,  "  Music  furnishes  us  with 
much  that  is  beautiful  and  sublime ;  but  this 
music  is  divinely  beautiful."  Wagner  owed 
much  to  Liszt  besides  money,  sympathy,  and 
a  wife. 

Even  in  the  matter  of  the  Niebelungenlied 
Wagner  was  anticipated  by  Friedrich  Hebbel, 
whose  somewhat  prosaic  dramatic  version  was 
first  given  at  Weimar,  in  the  Grand  Ducal 
Theatre,  May  16,  1861.  The  author's  wife,  a 
well-known  actress,  essayed  the  principal  role. 
A  critic  said  of  this  Trilogy,  "  No  one  hitherto 
has  collated  the  whole  dramatic  treasure  of  the 
Niebelung  legends  and  made  it  playable  upon 
the  modern  stage."  Yet,  who  to-day  remem- 
bers Hebbel,  and  who  does  not  know  Wagner's 
Trilogy  ? 

But  this  indebtedness  of  one  genius  to  another 
is  often  sadly  misinterpreted.  Handel  helped 
himself,  in  his  accustomed  royal  manner,  to 
what  he  liked,  and  the  tunes  of  many  com- 
posers whose  names  are  long  since  forgotten 
are  preserved  in  his  scenes  like  flies  in  amber. 
Shakespeare  did  not  hesitate  to  appropriate  from 
Plutarch  and  Montaigne,  from  Bandello  and 
Holinshed, —  yet  he  remains  Shakespeare.  Wag- 
ner, perhaps,  was  not  cautious  ;  and  Liszt  is  too 
important  a  composer  to  have  been  thus  treated, 
too  important,  and  also  too  much  of  a  contem- 
porary. Why  should  we  cavil  ?  Wagner  made 
good  use  of  his  borrowings,  and  it  is  in  their 
69 


OVERTONES 

individual  handling  and  development  that  he 
still  remains  Richard  Wagner. 

Richard  Strauss  once  said  :  "  How  necessary 
to  every  composer  who  writes  for  orchestra  the 
contact  with  that  body  is,  I  will  show  you  in  one 
example.  It  is  well  known  that  when  Wagner 
conducted  for  the  first  time  Lohengrin,  many 
years  after  its  completion,  he  exclaimed,  '  Too 
much  brass  ! '  In  his  exile  he  also  wrote  Tristan 
and  Isolde,  a  tone-poem  which  makes  over- 
great  demands  upon  the  orchestra  and  the 
singers.  Parsifal,  however,  he  wrote  at  Bay- 
reuth.  He  had  regained  intimate  feeling  again 
with  the  orchestra  and  the  stage.  Hence  I 
recognize  in  Parsifal  a  model  of  instrumental 
reserve." 

This  quite  bears  out  Arthur  Symons's  con- 
tention that  the  best  way  to  study  a  great 
artist  is  in  the  works  of  his  decline,  when  his 
invention  is  on  the  wane.  Another  thing,  and 
this  should  settle  the  controversy  over  that 
much  discussed  phrase,  "  Buhnenweihfestspiel," 
Hanslick,  Wagner's  heartiest  opponent,  wrote 
in  1882  :  "  I  must  say  at  once  that  the  ecclesi- 
astic scenes  in  Parsifal  did  not  at  the  perform- 
ance produce  nearly  as  offensive  an  effect  as 
they  do  on  one  who  merely  reads  the  text-book. 
The  actions  we  see  are  of  a  religious  character, 
but  with  all  their  dignified  solemnity  they  are 
nevertheless  not  in  the  style  of  the  church,  but 
entirely  in  the  operatic  style.  Parsifal  is  and 
70 


PARSIFAL 

remains  an  opera,  even  though   it  be  called  a 
Biihnenweihfestspiel." 

Touching  on  the  acrimonious  controversy  over 
Parsifal's  blasphemy,  I  may  only  say  —  to  every 
one  their  belief.  No  one  is  forced  to  see  the 
melodrama,  for  a  mystic  melodrama  it  is,  with 
the  original  connotations  of  the  phrase.  The 
entire  work  is  such  a  jumble  of  creeds  that 
future  Bauers,  Harnacks,  Delitzsches,  and  other 
ethical  archaeologists  will  have  a  terrible  task  if 
the  work  is  taken  for  a  relic  of  some  tribal  form 
of  worship  among  the  barbarians  of  the  then 
remote  nineteenth  century.  Here  in  America, 
the  Land  of  the  Almighty  Hysteria,  this  artificial 
medley  of  faded  music  and  grotesque  forms  is 
sufficiently  eclectic  in  character  to  set  tripping 
the  feet  of  them  that  go  forth  upon  the  moun- 
tains in  search  of  new,  half-baked  religions. 

And  now  to  a  complete  analysis  of  the  work, 
an  analysis,  be  it  said,  first  made  at  Bayreuth  in 
August,  1 90 1.  That  it  may  prove  unpleasant 
reading  for  some  I  do  not  doubt.  I  only  hope 
that  I  shall  not  be  accused  of  artistic  irreverence. 
The  personal  equation  counts  for  something  in 
criticism.  I  cannot  admire  Parsifal,  and  I  am 
giving  my  reasons  for  this  dislike.  There  is  no 
reason  why  the  criticism  that  has  so  royally 
acclaimed  the  beauty  of  Wagner's  other  music- 
dramas  should  be  suspected  in  the  case  of  Parsi- 
fal.     Why  should   Parsifal  be  hedged  as  if  of 

n 


OVERTONES 

"sacred  character"?  If  you  tell  a  Parsifalite 
that  the  opera  is  blasphemous,  he  proves  volu- 
bly, ingeniously,  that  it  is  pure  symbolism,  that 
Saracenic,  Buddhistic,  any  but  Christian,  cere- 
monial is  employed.  But  if  you  turn  the  tables, 
and  assert  that  Parsifal  is  not  sacred,  that  it 
should  be  enjoyed  and  criticised  like  Tristan 
and  Isolde,  the  Parsifalite  quickly  jumps  the 
track  and  exclaims,  "Sir,  there  is  sacred  atmos- 
phere in  Parsifal,  and  not  in  Tristan  !  "  Oh, 
this  sacred  atmosphere !  It  is  worse  than 
Nietzsche's  Holy  Laughter  !  The  question  may 
be  summed  up  thus :  If  Parsifal  is  blasphe- 
mous, it  should  not  be  tolerated  ;  if  it  is  not  a 
representation  of  sacred  matter,  then  we  have 
the  privilege  of  criticising  it  as  we  do  a  Verdi 
or  a  Meyerbeer  opera;  and  Meyerbeer  was  an 
inveterate  mocker  of  religious  things  —  witness 
Les  Huguenots,  Robert  le  Diable,  Le  Prophete. 
How  about  Halevy's  La  Juive  ?  Parsifal,  so  it 
appears  to  me,  is  more  morbid  than  blasphe- 
mous. 

Ready-made  admiration  is  dangerous.  It  be- 
hooves us  to  study  Parsifal  for  ourselves,  and  not 
accept  as  gospel  the  uncritical  enthusiasms  of  the 
Wagnerite  who  is  without  a  sense  of  the  eternal 
fitness  of  things.  One  ounce  of  humor,  of  com- 
mon sense,  puts  to  flight  the  sham  ethical  and 
the  sham  aesthetical  of  the  Parsifal  worshippers. 
And  level-headed  study  should  prove  of  profit. 
The  composition    is    a    miracle    of     polyphonic 


PARSIFAL 

architecture  —  and  it  is  also  the  weakest  that  its 
creator  ever  planned. 

PARSIFAL 

Parsifal  a  vaincu  les  filles,  leur  gentil 
Babil  et  la  luxure  amusante  et  sa  pente 
Vers  la  chair  de  garcon  vierge  que  cela  tente 

D'aimer  les  seins  legers  et  ce  gentil  babil. 

II  a  vaincu  la  femme  belle  au  coeur  subtil 
Etalant  ces  bras  frais  et  sa  gorge  excitante ; 
II  a  vaincu  Tenfer,  et  rentre  dans  sa  tente 

Avec  un  lourd  trophee  a  son  bras  pueril. 

Avec  la  lance  qui  perca  le  flanc  supreme  ! 
II  a  gueri  le  roi,  le  voici  roi  lui-meme 
Et  pretre  du  tres-saint  tresor  essentiel ; 

En  robe  d'or  il  adore,  gloire  et  symbole, 
Le  vase  pur  ou  resplendit  le  sang  reel, 
—  Et,  o  ces  voix  d'enfants  chantant  dans  la  coupole. 

—  Paul  Verlaine. 

I 
THE   BOOK 

Parsifal  was  published  in  book  form  on 
December  25,  1877.  The  first  act  was  com 
pleted  during  the  winter  of  1 877-1 878,  and  the 
instrumentation  of  the  prelude  finished  by  De- 
cember 25,  1878.  The  spring  and  summer  of 
1878  were  devoted  to  the  second  act,  a  sketch 
of  which  was  prepared  October  1 1  of  the  same 
73 


OVERTONES 

year.  The  third  act  was  finished  by  April  25, 
1879,  and  from  1878  to  1882  the  gigantic  task 
of  orchestration  was  undertaken.  In  the  copy- 
ing of  this  Wagner  was  assisted  by  the  late 
Anton  Seidl  and  Engelbert  Humperdinck.  The 
entire  first  act  was  not  completed  until  the 
spring  of  1880.  In  a  villa  near  Naples  he  fin- 
ished the  second  act,  with  its  garden  scene ; 
and  in  Palermo,  January  13,  1882,  the  sacred 
music-drama  was  given  its  final  form.  July  28 
of  the  same  year  Parsifal  was  first  performed 
at  Bayreuth,  with  Materna  as  Kundry,  Winkle- 
mann  as  Parsifal,  Reichmann  as  Amfortas ; 
Kindermann  sang  the  phrases  allotted  to  Titurel, 
and  Scaria  was  Gurnemanz.  The  Klingsor  was 
Karl  Hill.  Hermann  Levi  conducted.  Thus 
much  for  dry  statistics. 

"  Besides  my  Siegfried,"  Wagner  wrote  Au- 
gust 9,  1849,  to  Uhlig,  "  I  have  in  my  mind  two 
tragic  and  two  comic  subjects ;  but  not  one  of 
them  seems  to  me  to  be  suitable  for  the  French 
stage.  I  have  just  found  a  fifth  one ;  it  is  in- 
different to  me  in  what  language  it  will  appear 
first ;  it  is  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  I  have  the  inten- 
tion to  offer  it  to  the  French  and  thus  to  get 
rid  of  the  whole  affair,  for  I  foresee  the  indig- 
nation this  project  will  excite  in  my  collaborator." 
Wagner's  plan  was  to  make  a  play  in  which 
Christ  would  be  tempted  by  Mary  Magdalen. 
This  idea  was  abandoned.  With  the  conception 
of  Tristan  and  Isolde  came  the  scheme  for  a 
74 


PARSIFAL 

Parsifal.  He  wrote  of  this  to  Liszt  in  1876, 
being  full  of  Schopenhauer  and  Buddhism  at 
the  time.  The  Victors  was  the  sketch  found 
among  his  papers,  the  hero  of  which  is  the 
Eastern  prince  Ananda,  who  rejects  the  love  of 
the  beautiful  Princess  Prakriti,  and  by  this  act 
of  renunciation  achieves  his  and  the  woman's 
redemption.  Parsifal  is  not  far  removed  from 
this  sketch.  In  1857  near  Zurich  Wagner  be- 
came obsessed  by  the  idea,  and  on  a  Good 
Friday  the  genesis  of  Parsifal  occurred.  In 
1864  this  sketch,  at  the  request  of  Ludwig  II, 
was  carefully  developed,  and  became  the  com- 
plete music-drama. 

Wagner  has  rooted  his  story  in  the  old  legends 
and  history  of  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach  and 
Chretien  de  Troies.  The  latter  wrote  his  poem 
in  1 175,  Perceval  the  Gaul;  or,  the  Story  of  the 
Grail;  the  former  was  composed  between  1201 
and  12 10.  But  the  story  was  centuries  old  before 
Chretien  handled  it,  its  origin  probably  being 
Provencal.  And  before  that  it  may  have  sprung 
from  the  Moorish,  from  the  Egyptian,  from  the 
Indian,  from  the  very  beginnings  of  literature, 
for  it  is  but  the  old  story  of  might  warring 
against  right,  evil  attempting  to  seduce  good. 
It  crops  out  in  a  modified  form  in  the  Arthurian 
cycle,  for  the  Round  Table  and  the  Grail  are 
united  in  one.  Whether  Perceval,  Parzival,  or 
Parsifal,  we  find  the  guileless  young  hero 
fighting  against  wrong  and  resisting  evil.  There 
75 


OVERTONES 

is  even  a  Romance  of  Peredur  to  be  found  in 
the  Mabinogion  or  Red  Book,  a  collection  of 
Welsh  romances.  Some  believe  this  Peredur  to 
be  the  prototype  of  the  French  Perceval.  In  all 
these  poems  there  is  a  Kundry,  or  Kondrie,  or 
Orgeleuse,  a  sorceress ;  and  a  King  who  has 
sinned  —  Le  Roi  Pecheur.  The  Knighthood  of 
the  Grail  is  a  consecrated  community  that  wor- 
ships the  sang-real,  the  precious  blood  of  Jesus 
Christ,  which  some  say  was  caught  up  in  a 
goblet  after  the  soldier  Longinus  pierced  the 
side  of  the  Saviour  on  Calvary.  This  lance  also 
plays  an  important  part  in  the  poems,  and  in 
Wagner's  music-drama.  Montsalvat  is  a  beauti- 
ful temple  in  a  far-away  land  —  presumably 
Spain  —  where  the  knights  of  the  Grail,  or  Graal, 
meet  to  receive  spiritual  nourishment  from  the 
holy  chalice  containing  God's  blood.  Every 
year  a  white  dove  descends  from  heaven  to  lend 
new  powers  and  strength  to  the  miraculous  vase 
inclosing  the  blood.  These  knights  are  vowed 
to  chastity,  and  it  was  a  sin  against  chastity 
committed  by  Amfortasthat  caused  the  monarch 
all  his  suffering.  Kundry  it  was  who  tempted 
the  King.  Klingsor,  the  enchanter,  a  eunuch 
by  his  own  act,  prompts  Kundry  to  all  this  evil. 
Gurnemanz,  the  aged  servitor  of  the  Grail,  and 
Titurel,  the  dead  King,  though  miraculously 
alive,  father  of  Amfortas,  make  up  the  rest  of 
the  characters  in  this  strange  drama  of  pity  and 
renunciation. 

76 


PARSIFAL 

Wagner  saw  many  opportunities  in  the  le- 
gends and  poems,  and  as  was  his  wont  synthe- 
sized them  in  the  shape  we  know  as  Parsifal. 
His  Parsifal  is  a  born  innocent,  a  pure  fool. 
Wagner  pretended  to  derive  the  word  from 
Parsi-fal  or  Fal-Parsi  —  i.e.  Pure  Fool  —  born 
after  the  death  of  his  father,  Gamuret,  and 
living  alone  with  his  mother,  Herzeleide,  in  the 
woods.  Attracted  by  a  cavalcade  of  shining 
knights  he  follows  it  and  finally  enters  the 
domain  of  the  Grail.  Let  us  leave  him  there 
and  consider  that  curious  composition  of  the 
poet-musician  —  Kundry.  Wagner  found  some 
of  her  characteristics  in  the  old  poems,  but  to 
him  belongs  the  credit  of  creating  the  woman 
we  see  in  his  drama.  She  is  Kundry  the  en- 
chantress, Herodias,  who  laughed  at  Christ,  who 
had  John  the  Baptist  beheaded  —  "  she  is  said 
to  have  laughed  when  she  bore  aloft  the  head," 
and  it  breathed  upon  her,  thus  condemning  her 
to  eternal  wandering.  Besides  this,  Kundry  is 
also  Gundryggia  of  the  Northern  nymphs,  the 
slaying  Valkyr.  A  type  of  the  eternal  temp- 
tress, and  yet  a  Magdalen,  Wagner  calls  her 
the  Rose  of  Hell,  the  She  Devil,  a  tempestuous 
spirit,  a  perpetual  seducer.  She  is  under  Kling- 
sor's  rule,  though  she  humbly  serves  the  Grail 
Knights  in  their  estate  when  she  is  not  asleep. 
Asleep,  Klingsor  can  summon  her  as  he  wills, 
and  then,  instead  of  the  Beneficent  Kundry,  she 
becomes  the  Demon  Kundry. 

77 


OVERTONES 

Now  follows  the  story  of  Richard  Wagner's 
Parsifal,  which  I  condense  with  the  help  of 
Maurice  Kufferath's  version  and  from  the  epit- 
omes of  von  Wolzogen,  Albert  Heintz,  and  many 
others.  It  is  assumed  before  the  curtain  rises 
that  the  spectator  is  acquainted  with  the  tale  of 
the  foolish  lad  Parsifal  and  his  roaming  in  the 
forest,  bow  and  arrow  in  hand,  in  pursuit  of  the 
"  shining  men  mounted  upon  noble  steeds."  He 
loses  his  way  and  enters  the  region  of  the  Grail. 
At  this  point  the  curtains  part  and  we  see  a  deep 
wood  in  a  mountainous  district.  The  book  of 
the  play  tells  us  of  the  scene  of  action  :  "  The 
domains  and  Castle  Montsalvat  of  the  Guardian 
of  the  Grail,  with  scenery  characteristic  of  the 
northern  mountains  of  Gothic  Spain.  Later 
Klingsor's  enchanted  castle  on  a  southern  slope 
of  the  same  mountains,  looking  toward  Moorish 
Spain."  The  scene  in  Act  I  represents  a  clear- 
ing upon  the  border  of  a  beautiful  lake.  It 
is  morning.  Stretched  in  slumber  upon  the 
ground  are  Gurnemanz,  a  pious,  hale  old  ser- 
vant of  the  Grail,  and  two  squires.  Brass  music 
awakens  them,  and  after  prayer  they  prepare 
to  attend  the  King  Amfortas,  who  is  at  the  very 
moment  approaching  the  lake  for  his  bath  —  he 
suffers  cruelly  from  his  wound.  Two  knights 
appear  and  inform  the  others  of  this  suffering. 
The  balsam  of  Gawain  is  without  effect.  Sud- 
denly there  appears  on  the  edge  of  the  forest  a 
terrible  figure.  It  is  Kundry.  Wagner  thus 
78 


PARSIFAL 

indicates  her  appearance :  "  in  wild  garb  fastened 
high  with  a  hanging  girdle  of  snakes'  skins ; 
black  hair,  flowing  in  loose  tresses  ;  dark  brown, 
reddish  complexion,  piercing  black  eyes,  at  times 
flaming  wildly,  but  oftener  fixed  as  in  death." 
She  brings  from  Arabia  a  balsam  to  soothe  the 
King's  pain.  Enter  Amfortas.  He  seeks  the 
cool  of  the  forest  after  his  night  of  agony.  The 
lake,  too,  will  give  him  some  surcease  to  his 
pain.  But  Gurnemanz  knows  better  :  "  But  One 
thing  helpeth  —  One  the  helper,"  he  mutters. 
Amfortas  repeats  the  prophecy  that  once  in 
letters  of  fire  appeared  about  the  rim  of  the 
Grail  vase :  "  Durch  Mitleid  wissend,  der  reine 
Thor,  harre  sein,  den  ich  erkor;"  that  is,  "By 
pity  waken'd  the  blameless  Fool,  him  await  my 
chosen  tool."  The  King  longs  for  death.  Kun- 
dry  offers  him  the  balsam.  "  Of  what  use  the 
balm  ?  All  is  useless ;  rather  a  bath  in  the 
waters  of  the  lake."  The  litter  bearing  the  royal 
sufferer  moves  sadly  and  slowly  away,  while 
Kundry  crouches  down  like  a  hunted  wild  ani- 
mal. The  squires  tease  her  until  Gurnemanz 
recalls  to  them  that  even  beasts  are  sacred  within 
the  territory  of  the  Grail.  Then  follows  a  long 
recital  by  the  elder  man,  who,  in  reply  to  ques- 
tions, relates  the  story  of  Amfortas  and  his  sin. 
Klingsor,  enraged  at  being  denied  admission 
to  the  Order  of  the  Grail  after  his  mad  act  of 
self-mutilation,  raised  by  his  infernal  arts  a  magic 
castle  and  gardens  not  far  from  Montsalvat. 
79 


OVERTONES 

This  he  filled  with  lovely  girls,  who  tempted  the 
Knights  of  the  Round  Table.  Amfortas  resolved 
to  destroy  this  Castle  of  Perdition.  Armed  with 
the  sacred  lance  which  pierced  the  Saviour's  side 
he  laid  siege  to  Klingsor's  abode.  Unluckily 
for  him  a  supernaturally  beautiful  woman,  Kun- 
dry,  was  sent  by  Klingsor,  —  whose  heart  was 
black  with  envy,  —  and  waylaid  by  her  Amfortas 
succumbed  to  her  fascinations.  As  he  was 
clasped  in  her  embrace  the  spear  dropped  and 
was  seized  by  Klingsor,  who  gave  him  a  fatal 
thrust  in  the  side.  No  alleviation  was  there  for 
this  pain.  Even  the  mystic  bread  which  he 
occasionally  dared  to  dispense  to  his  knights 
did  not  bring  ease.  Klingsor  kept  the  sacred 
spear,  and  by  its  aid  hoped  some  day  to  capture 
Montsalvat  itself. 

When  Gurnemanz  finishes  this  harrowing  tale 
the  four  squires  kneel  and  sing  the  above  pre- 
diction, "  Durch  Mitleid  wissend."  Cries  are 
suddenly  heard,  and  knights  rush  in  to  inform 
their  horrified  hearers  that  a  blasphemer  has 
dared  to  enter  the  sacred  park  and  shoot  one 
of  the  swans.  The  culprit  is  dragged  in.  It 
is  Parsifal,  with  his  bow  and  arrow.  The  swan 
lies  in  death  throes  before  him.  While  vainly 
endeavoring  to  discover  his  name,  his  identity, 
Gurnemanz  reproaches  him  for  having  shed 
innocent  blood,  and  points  out  to  him  the  hei- 
nousness  of  his  offence.  Parsifal  is  overcome 
with  shame  —  and  pity.      Plere  is  first  indicated 


PARSIFAL 

the  cardinal  trait  of  his  character.  He  relates 
to  Gurnemanz  the  little  he  knows  of  his  early- 
life —  with  which  the  reader  is  already  acquainted 
—  and  tells  of  his  mother  Herzeleide.  Kundry 
sneeringly  interrupts.  His  mother  is  dead  from 
sorrow  at  her  boy's  desertion.  Parsifal,  raging, 
throws  himself  upon  the  woman,  but  is  dragged 
away.  The  truth  forcing  itself  upon  him,  he 
grows  faint  and  is  revived  by  water  from  a 
spring.  At  this  juncture  Kundry  grows  sleepy. 
Well  she  knows — though  the  others  do  not  — 
that  her  master  is  about  to  summon  her.  Filled 
with  despair  she  staggers  into  the  bushes  and 
is  seen  no  more.  Gurnemanz,  his  heart  revived 
by  the  pure  foolishness  of  the  lad,  begins  to  hope 
anew,  and  the  King's  litter  returning  to  the  pal- 
ace, he  again  questions  Parsifal.  "What  is  the 
Grail  ?  "  asks  in  turn  the  youth.  Then  the  pair 
appear  to  move  slowly,  and  the  scene  changes, 
to  the  accompaniment  of  the  sombre  "  Verwand- 
lungsmusik,"  from  the  forest  to  rocky  galleries, 
finally  to  the  Byzantine  hall  of  the  Holy  Grail. 
All  this  is  accomplished  by  scenery  which  moves 
in  grooves.  Parsifal  questions  Gurnemanz  as 
to  this  phenomenon.  "  I  slowly  tread,  yet  deem 
myself  now  far,"  he  says.  "  Thou  seest,  my  son, 
to  space  time  changeth  here,"  answers  Gurne- 
manz, which  is  a  choice  metaphysical  morsel  for 
the  admirers  of  Kant  and  Schopenhauer. 

Now  begins   the   most  solemn   scene  of  the 
music-drama.     To  the  pealing  of  bells,  the  in- 
g  81 


OVERTONES 

toning  of  trumpets  and  trombones,  the  scene  of 
the  Holy  Grail  is  inaugurated.  Into  the  vast 
hall  files  the  cortege  of  the  sick  monarch,  and 
the  Grail  Knights,  wearing  white  coats  of  arms, 
a  dove  embroidered  upon  a  red  mantle,  advance 
in  double  lines  and  group  themselves  about  the 
table.  They  chant,  and  boys'  voices  from  the 
middle  part  of  the  dome  reply,  while  children's 
voices  in  the  cupola  high  above  join  in  a  celestial 
chorus.  After  a  profound  silence  the  voice  of 
Titurel  issues  from  his  tomb  behind  the  throne. 
The  dead  man  is  revived  by  the  potency  of  the 
Grail.  He  bids  his  erring  son  to  perform  the 
sacred  office,  to  uncover  the  Holy  Grail.  Then 
follows  a  dramatic  episode.  Conscious  of  his 
unworthiness  and  showing  his  bleeding  side, 
Amfortas  long  resists  the  request  of  his  father. 
It  is  a  part  of  his  expiation  that,  sinner  as  he  is, 
he  must  officiate  at  the  solemn  sacrifice.  His 
protests  are  not  heeded.  The  children's  voices 
from  the  cupola  recall  the  prediction,  "  Durch 
Mitleid  wissend."  Exhausted,  pale,  and  suffering 
untold  agonies,  Amfortas  lifts  the  crystal  vase, 
the  Grail.  A  ray  of  piercing  pure  light  falls 
from  above  on  the  chalice  —  the  hall  is  now 
dark  —  which  becomes  luminous  and  glows  with 
purple  splendor.  Amfortas  sings,  "Take  this 
bread,  it  is  my  flesh ;  take  this  wine,  it  is  my 
blood  which  love  has  given  thee."  The  singing 
by  the  various  choirs  breaks  forth  anew,  and  as 
daylight  returns  the  holy  ceremonies  conclude 
82 


PARSIFAL 

with  the  kiss  of  peace  by  the  brethren.  The 
King  is  carried  away,  the  knights  withdraw  as 
the  voices  from  the  cupola  sing,  "  Happy  in 
faith,  Happy  in  love."  Parsifal,  who  has  been 
staring  about  him  all  this  time,  is  interrogated 
by  Gurnemanz.  The  latter  has  not  noticed  the 
convulsive  start  made  by  the  pure  fool  when  he 
sees  Amfortas  fall  back  upon  his  couch.  Pity 
has  entered  his  heart,  though  he  is  not  able  to 
voice  this  sentiment  to  Gurnemanz.  The  latter, 
angered  by  such  seeming  stupidity,  thrusts  him 
roughly  from  the  hall,  bidding  him  go  seek  a 
goose  for  his  gander.  Then,  saddened  by  this 
fresh  disappointment,  the  old  man  stands  alone 
in  the  hall.  Like  a  gleam  of  hope  an  alto  voice 
from  the  mysterious  height  repeats  the  predic- 
tion, "  Durch  Mitleid  wissend,"  and  is  joined  by 
boys'  voices.  To  this  music  the  curtains  close. 
As  in  the  Rheingold,  where  Nibelheim  follows 
Walhalla,  Wagner  gains  a  violent  contrast  by 
placing  the  action  of  the  second  act  in  Klingsor's 
dread  castle.  The  scene  represents  the  magi- 
cian's laboratory  —  a  sort  of  Faust-like  chamber 
at  the  top  of  a  tower.  The  place  is  in  semi- 
darkness,  a  well-like  abyss  to  the  left  evoking 
a  feeling  of  anticipation.  A  narrow  staircase 
ascends  to  an  aperture  in  the  wall,  an  azure  slit 
of  the  sky  being  revealed.  The  floor  is  strewn 
with  implements  of  sorcery,  and  on  the  steps 
Klingsor,  an  Arabian,  and  fierce  looking  man 
with  a  black  beard,  is  seated  gazing  into  a  wiz- 
83 


OVERTONES 

ard's  metallic  mirror.  By  its  aid  he  perceives 
Parsifal  approaching  the  castle,  having  already 
forgotten  his  experiences  in  Montsalvat  and 
haled  by  Klingsor's  spell.  With  a  cry  of  satis- 
faction the  magician  leaves  his  vantage  post, 
descends,  and  approaches  the  chasm.  Throw- 
ing incense  into  it  he  begins  his  cabalistic 
spells ;  "  Up,  Kundry,  ascend  from  the  gulf ! 
Come  to  me.  Thy  master  calls  thee,  thou 
nameless  one,  primal  fiend,  rose  of  hell !  Thou 
who  wert  Herodias,  and  what  more !  Once 
Gundryggia,  now  Kundry;  up,  up,  to  thy  mas- 
ter ;  obey  him  who  has  sole  power  over  thee !  " 

A  lovely  woman  appears  enveloped  in  a  misty 
veil.  It  is  Kundry.  She  screams,  a  blood- 
curdling scream  which  modulates  into  a  feeble, 
whimpering  moan.  The  dialogue  which  ensues 
is  not  a  pleasing  one.  Klingsor  berates  the 
woman  for  serving  the  knights  like  a  beast  of 
burden,  as  reparation  for  her  crime  against 
Amfortas.  She  sneers  at  his  lost  powers,  and 
absolutely  refuses  to  seduce  the  approaching 
Parsifal.  But  in  vain  she  resists  her  mas- 
ter. A  sound  of  battle  is  heard.  Single- 
handed,  Parsifal,  without,  routs  the  feeble, 
enslaved  knights  of  Klingsor.  From  his  win- 
dow in  the  battlements  the  wizard  views  the 
strife  with  satisfaction.  He  would  be  pleased 
to  see  his  weak  servitors  killed  by  this  robust, 
handsome  youth.  Kundry  vanishes  to  prepare 
for  her  fell  work  of  destruction.  The  tower 
84 


PARSIFAL 

sinks  to  strange,  thunderous  noises,  and  we 
behold  Parsifal  in  a  many-colored  tropical  gar- 
den, dense  with  flowers  of  an  unearthly  hue 
and  splendor.  Almost  immediately  he  is  sur- 
rounded by  girls,  living  flowers  who  coquet, 
tease,  and  lure  him  to  ravishing  music.  The 
scene  is  a  gay  one.  Parsifal  repulses  one  group 
after  another,  when  suddenly  a  voice  sings, 
"Parsifal,  stay."  He  is  deeply  moved.  "Par- 
sifal ?  Thus  once  my  mother  called  me."  He 
remembers  his  name  at  last.  Thus  does  Wag- 
ner subtly  indicate  the  growing  knowledge  that 
passion  reveals.  A  scene  of  temptation  follows 
that  has  no  parallel  in  art  or  literature.  Lulling 
the  youth's  chaste  suspicions  by  telling  him  of 
his  mother  Herzeleide,  she  at  last  wins  him  to 
her  side  and  imprints  upon  his  lips  his  mother's 
kiss,  her  own  magic  kiss.  Instead  of  succumb- 
ing Parsifal  leaps  to  his  feet  and  presses  his 
heart.  He  cries  in  agony,  "  Amfortas !  the 
wound  —  the  wound  !  It  burns  within  me,  too." 
Kundry's  kiss  shows  him  what  the  entire  Grail 
did  not  know  —  that  she  was  the  cause  of  the 
King's  downfall.  He  understands  all  now,  and 
his  one  thought  is  to  go  to  the  King  and  relieve 
his  pain.  He  is  the  poor  fool  who  pities.  Mad 
and  desperate,  Kundry  detains  him.  She  be- 
lieves that  he  can,  if  he  so  wills  it,  release  her 
from  Klingsor's  hideous  spell.  He  is  to  be  her 
saviour ;  a  second  one,  not  the  real  Jesus  at 
whom  she  laughed  and  meeting  whose  reproach- 
85 


OVERTONES 

ful  gaze  she  forever  after  wandered.  She  is  the 
real  Woman  who  laughed.  Her  laughter  shud- 
deringly  resounds  throughout  hell,  whenever  a 
sinner  yields  to  her  seductions.  But  Parsifal  is 
different.  Perhaps,  being  a  frequenter  of  the 
Grail  land,  and  a  very  Erda  for  wisdom,  Kun- 
dry  knows  of  the  prediction.  She  weaves  a 
web  of  voluptuous  beauty ;  Parsifal  escapes  its 
blandishments.  Then  finding  that  this  fails,  she 
curses  him,  with  furious  and  hysterical  curses. 
"Renounce  desire;  to  end  thy  sufferings  thou 
must  destroy  their  source."  Thus  Parsifal  en- 
joins her.  But  Kundry  will  not  be  convinced. 
"  My  kiss  it  was  that  made  thee  clear-sighted. 
My  embrace  would  make  thee  divine."  He 
asks  for  the  road  to  Amfortas.  She  curses 
him.  "  Never,  never,  shall  thou  find  that  road 
again.  The  Saviour's  curse  gives  me  power. 
Wander  !  "  She  frantically  summons  Klingsor, 
who  appears  upon  the  terrace  with  poised 
spear.  The  flower  girls  rush  in,  and  Klingsor 
hurls  the  weapon  at  the  audacious  intruder. 
But  it  whizzes  over  Parsifal's  head,  where  float- 
ing in  the  air  he  seizes  it  and  makes  the  sign 
of  the  cross.  A  cataclysm  ensues.  The  cas- 
tle and  garden  sink  into  the  earth,  accompanied 
by  volcanic  explosions,  the  flower  girls  become 
withered  hags,  and  all  the  enchanting  vista  of 
flowers  is  transformed  into  an  arid  waste.  Kun- 
dry falls  to  the  ground  prostrated.  Parsifal,  sur- 
veying this  desolate  ruin  from  the  shattered 
86 


PARSIFAL 

ramparts,  utters  to  Kundry  these  prophetic 
words,  "  Thou  knowest  where  to  find  me." 
Immediately  the  curtains  veil  this  effective 
scene. 

Act  III  brings  us  back  to  the  Grail  con- 
fines, where  a  tender,  idyllic  landscape  on  the 
edge  of  a  forest  discloses  a  hermit's  hut,  with  a 
spring  hard  by.  It  is  a  spring  morning.  Gurne- 
manz,  now  a  white-haired,  sorrowful  old  man, 
has  relinquished  all  hope  of  a  saviour  for  the 
King.  He  feels  that  unless  death  intervenes, 
Klingsor  will  become  master  of  the  Grail,  for 
he  knows  nothing  of  the  stirring  events  in  the 
preceding  act.  A  low  cry  in  the  bushes  ap- 
prises him  of  Kundry's  presence.  She  is  half 
dead,  but  is  revived  by  the  old  hermit.  She 
feebly  moans,  "  Service,  service,"  and  then 
rises  and  goes  to  the  hut,  where  she  gets  a 
pitcher.  This  she  carries  to  the  spring,  and 
fills.  Gurnemanz  marvels  at  her  altered  and 
penitential  appearance.  But  she  makes  signs. 
One  is  approaching.  A  stranger  knight  in  coal 
black  armor,  with  visor  down  and  spear  in 
hand,  is  seen.  He  gravely  advances.  Gurne- 
manz asks  his  name.  The  stranger  shakes  his 
head.  Adjured  to  remove  his  armor,  as  it  is 
Good  Friday,  and  no  Christian  knight  must 
bear  arms  on  that  holy  day,  the  stranger  obeys. 
He  plants  his  spear  in  the  ground,  removes  his 
shield  and  sword,  unfastens  his  armor,  takes  off 
his  helmet,  and  kneels  in  fervent  prayer  before 
S7 


OVERTONES 

the  lance.  At  once  he  is  recognized  by  Gurne- 
manz  as  the  youth  who  killed  the  swan,  and  the 
lance  is  also  remarked  with  keen  emotion.  "  Oh, 
blessed  day,"  cries  the  old  man,  who  knows  that 
his  King's  saviour  is  now  at  hand.  Now  fol- 
lows a  series  of  pictures.  They  move  before 
the  eyes  like  some  strange  dream  in  a  land 
where  life  has  resolved  itself  into  processional 
attitudes.  One  dissolves  into  another.  The 
kneeling  knight  recalls  an  Albrecht  Diirer,  and 
his  blessing  by  Gurnemanz,  his  baptism  of  the 
repentant  Kundry,  —  who  utters  but  two  words 
during  the  act,  —  and  the  washing  of  his  feet 
Magdalen-like,  are  all  accompanied  by  music 
that  is  almost  gesture,  and  with  gestures  that 
are  almost  musical.  Gurnemanz  informs  Parsi- 
fal that  Amfortas  is  in  sad  extremities,  his 
father,  Titurel,  no  longer  strengthened  by  the 
Grail,  is  really  dead,  and  the  King  refuses  to 
perform  the  sacred  office.  It  is  this  great  hour 
of  need  in  which  Parsifal  appears.  Parsifal 
tells  Gurnemanz  of  his  weary  wanderings  over 
the  earth  in  search  of  Montsalvat.  Sorely  be- 
set by  foes,  yet  he  dare  not  use  the  sacred 
spear.  It  has  been  kept  intact  from  worldly 
stain  or  strife.  Then  follows  the  soothing  Good 
Friday  magic  music  episode,  when  all  nature 
puts  on  its  sweetest  attire  to  give  thanks  to  the 
Saviour  who  suffered.  Bells  are  heard.  It  is 
noon.  As  in  the  first  act,  but  by  a  different 
route    and    accompanied    by    other    music,    the 


PARSIFAL 

scene  slowly  changes  to  the  domed  Temple  of 
the  Holy  Grail.  The  funeral  services  of  Titurel 
are  being  held.  The  hall  is  full  of  mourning 
knights.  Amfortas,  his  agony  at  its  apex,  re- 
fuses to  unveil  the  Grail,  and  begs  his  compan- 
ions to  slay  him,  for  he  can  no  longer  endure 
his  pain  and  shame.  Parsifal  enters,  accom- 
panied by  Gurnemanz.  He  witnesses  the  King's 
paroxysm,  and  then  advances  to  him.  With  the 
point  of  the  lance  he  heals  the  wound.  Kun- 
dry  dies  on  the  altar  steps,  and  Parsifal,  now 
King  of  Montsalvat,  mounts  the  step  and  lifts 
on  high  in  silent  invocation  the  crystal  vase. 
Mystic  voices  in  the  cupola  sing  "  Wondrous 
work  of  mercy.  Salvation  to  the  Saviour." 
Thus  the  mystic  melodrama  ends. 

In  the  first  draft  of  his  poem  Wagner  ended 
the  play  with  these  words  :  — 

Great  is  the  charm  of  desire, 
Greater  is  the  power  of  renunciation. 

In  all  the  complicated  web  of  this  drama  Pity 
and  Renunciation  are  the  two  principal  motives. 
Wagner  drew  his  themes  from  all  sources, — sa- 
gas, legends,  poems,  and  histories.  He  incorpo- 
rated episodes  from  the  Saviour's  life,  and  boldly 
utilized  the  theme  of  the  Last  Supper.  The  blood 
of  Christ  which  Joseph  of  Arimathea  is  said  to 
have  received  in  a  chalice  becomes  the  comfort- 
ing and  eucharistic  Grail.  Then  side  by  side 
with  all  these  conflicting  stories  he  places  the 
89 


OVERTONES 

semi-Saracenic  Klingsor,  the  very  embodiment 
of  a  magician  of  the  Dark  Ages,  and  Kundry, 
the  type  of  the  woman  of  all  times,  the  wander- 
ing Jewess,  the  Magdalen.  Parsifal  is  a  med- 
iaeval Jesus ;  the  knights  of  the  Holy  Grail, 
Apostles  transposed  to  a  later  epoch.  As  it 
suited  him  Wagner  violently  tossed  about  and 
made  sport  of  the  poetic  ideas  of  Chretien  de 
Troies  and  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach.  He 
Wagnerized  everything  he  touched.  The  re- 
sult is  Parsifal. 

If  the  poem  is  charged  to  the  full  with  Semitic, 
Buddhistic,  Patristic,  Christian,  and  Schopen- 
hauerian  philosophies,  the  play  affords  the  great 
master  fresco  painter  superb  opportunities  for 
scenic  display.  The  son  of  Geyer,  himself  a 
scene  painter,  dramatist,  poet,  and  composer, 
did  not  fail  to  take  advantage  of  the  chance 
to  indulge  his  taste  for  luxuriant,  glowing  colors, 
for  sensational  contrasts,  lofty  spaces,  and  all 
the  moving  magnificence  of  panoramic  display. 
There  are  many  tableaux  in  this  drama,  gen- 
uinely a  static  drama.  In  Act  I  we  see  Gurne- 
manz  surrounded  by  the  tender  squires,  while 
Kundry  cowers  in  the  foreground.  "  Doch  Vater 
sag,  und  lehr'  uns  fein ;  du  kanntest  Klingsor, 
wie  mag  das  sein  ?"  The  tableau  of  the  killed 
swan,  with  Parsifal  admonished  by  Gurnemanz, 
is  another  noteworthy  grouping.  Nothing  is  so 
impressive,  however,  as  the  spectacle  of  the  sick 
King  being  raised,  as  he  elevates  the  Grail. 
90 


PARSIFAL 

Klingsor's  tower  is  as  sinister  as  an  etching  by 
Salvator  Rosa.  The  flower  garden,  first  with 
the  damsels  and  then  desolate,  gives  two  strik- 
ing pictures.  Parsifal  stands  spear  in  hand. 
"  Du  weisst :  wo  einzig  du  mich  wiedersiehst !  " 
The  praying  knight  in  Act  III ;  Parsifal  in  white 
baptismal  robe,  recalling  Ary  Scheffer's  portrait 
of  Christ,  and  last  of  all  the  noble  harmonies  of 
the  last  scene,  the  descending  dove  and  the  mys- 
tic chant : — 

Hochsten  Heiles  Wunder, 

Erlosung  dem  Erloser. 

TO   A   KINGLY   FRIEND 

O  Kbnig  !  holder  Schirmherr  meines  Lebens  ! 
Du  hochster  giite  wonnereichster  Hort ! 
****** 

Was  du  mir  bist,  Kann  staunend  ich  nur  fassen, 

Wenn  mir  sich  zeigt,  was  ohne  dich  ich  war. 

****** 

Du  bist  der  holde  Lenz,  der  neu  mich  schmuckte, 
Der  mir  verjiiugt  der  Zweig  und  Aeste  Saft : 

—  Richard  Wagner. 


II 

THE   MUSIC 

One  is  filled  with  admiration  at  Wagner's  deft 
use  of  thematic  material  in  the  score  of  Parsifal. 
Despite  the  exegetical  enthusiasm  of  von  Wolzo- 

9* 


OVERTONES 

gen,  Heintz,  and  Kufferath,  a  very  few  motives 
suffice  the  master  for  his  polyphonic  skill  in 
development.  And  they  are  principally  in  the 
prelude  —  now  unhappily  a  familiar  concert 
room  number.  I  say  unhappily  because  no 
composer's  music  is  less  adapted  to  concert 
than  Wagner's.  Divorced  from  the  context 
of  gesture,  speech,  scenic  display,  his  music 
becomes  all  profile.  One  misses  the  full,  rich, 
significant  glance  of  the  eye.  Wagner  is  a 
weaver,  not  a  form-maker.  He  can  follow  a 
dramatic  situation,  or  burrow  deeply  into  the  core 
of  morbid  psychology ;  but  let  him  attempt  to 
stand  alone,  to  write  music  without  programme 
or  the  fever  of  the  footlights  —  then  he  is  the 
inferior  of  several  men,  the  inferior  of  Liszt, 
Tschai'kowsky,  and  Richard  Strauss  ;  not  to  men- 
tion Beethoven,  Schubert,  or  Chopin.  I  know 
that  this  opinion  ill  accords  with  the  belief  of 
many,  yet  I  do  not  think  it  can  be  disputed. 
His  preludes  and  overtures,  containing  as  they 
do  the  leading  motives  of  his  dramas,  are 
of  interest  only  for  that  reason.  Considered 
as  absolute  music  they  are  not  noteworthy, 
notwithstanding  their  coloring  and  grandiose 
themes.  So  is  it  with  Parsifal  —  even  more  so. 
The  work  preeminently  smells  of  the  lamp.  It 
lacks  spontaneity.  Its  subject  is  extremely  un- 
dramatic.  Nothing  happens  for  several  hours, — - 
nothing  but  discourses,  philosophical  and  retro- 
spective. Never  has  Wagner  so  laboriously 
92 


PARSIFAL 

built  a  book.  It  is  a  farrago  of  odds  and  ends, 
the  very  dust-bin  of  his  philosophies,  beliefs, 
vegetarian,  anti-vivisection,  and  other  fads.  You 
see  unfold  before  you  a  nightmare  of  characters 
and  events.  Without  simplicity,  without  lucidity, 
without  naturalness  —  Wagner  is  the  great  anti- 
naturalist  among  composers  —  this  book,  through 
which  has  been  sieved  Judaism,  Buddhism,  Chris- 
tianity, Schopenhauerism,  astounds  one  by  its 
puerility,  its  vapidity.  Yet  because  of  his  musi- 
cal genius,  Wagner  is  able  to  float  this  inorganic 
medley,  and  at  times  makes  it  almost  credible. 
It  is  an  astounding  feat  of  the  old  hypnotist  — 
for  hypnotist  he  is  in  Parsifal  as  in  no  other  com- 
position. By  sheer  force  of  his  musical  will,  this 
Klingsor  of  Bayreuth  hypnotizes  his  hearers 
with  two  or  three  themes  not  of  themselves  re- 
markable, as  Charcot  controls  his  patients  with 
a  shining  mirror. 

Wagner  always  selected  librettos  that  threw 
up  a  lot  of  dust  for  the  erudite.  His  Tristan  de- 
mands much  delving,  and  with  the  Ring  and  its 
complementary  literature  we  shall  never  finish. 
The  plain  fact  in  the  case  is  this :  Parsifal,  de- 
spite all  its  wealth  of  legend,  its  misty,  poetic  allu- 
siveness,  its  manufactured  mysticism,  is  simple 
old-fashioned  opera.  And  its  verse  qua  verse  is 
very  bad.  The  Wagnerites  reject  this  statement 
as  does  the  devil  holy  water.  Supposing  you 
enter  the  Wagner  theatre,  your  brain  cells  unen- 
cumbered with  the  memories  of  Perceval,  Par- 
93 


OVERTONES 

zival,  Parsifal,  Fal-Parsi,  and  the  rest  of  the 
philological  mystification,  what  do  you  see?  — 
and  remember  that  the  ideal  drama  should  set 
forth  without  previous  knowledge  or  explana- 
tion its  dramatic  content. 

You  see  an  old-fashioned  and  very  tedious 
opera  —  setting  aside  some  of  the  music;  and 
there  is  throughout  an  abuse  of  the  tremolo  that 
sounds  suspiciously  Italian.  You  see  a  lot  of 
women-hating  men,  deceiving  themselves  with 
spears,  drugs,  old  goblets,  all  manners  of  jug- 
gling formulas,  and  yet  being  waited  upon  by  a 
woman  —  a  poor,  miserable  witch.  You  see 
a  silly  youth  treated  as  if  he  had  murdered  a 
human  being  because  he  shot  a  swan.  You 
see  this  same  dead  bird  borne  away  on  a  litter 
of  twigs,  to  noble,  impressive  music  like  a  feath- 
ered Siegfried.  Surely  Wagner  was  without  a 
sense  of  the  humorous  ;  or  was  he  parodying  his 
own  Death  of  Siegfried,  as  Ibsen  parodied  Ibsen 
in  A  Wild  Duck  ?  You  see  a  theatrically  impos- 
ing temple,  modelled  after  the  Duomo  of  Siena, 
wherein  a  maniacal  King  raves  over  an  impos- 
sible wound,  and  performs  ceremonies  recalling 
the  Roman  Catholic  communion  service.  In 
Act  II  you  are  transported  to  the  familiar  land 
of  Christmas  pantomime.  There  a  bad  magician 
seeks  to  destroy  the  castle  of  the  noble  knights, 
and  evokes  a  beautiful  phantom  to  serve  his  pur- 
pose. There  are  spells,  incantations,  blue  lights, 
screaming  that  makes  the  blood  run  cold,  and  the 
94 


PARSIFAL 

whole  bagful  of  tricks  that  Weber,  Marschner, 
and  even  Mozart  delighted  in.  Follows  fast 
the  magic  garden,  and  the  sirens  with  rose 
petals  on  head.  The  foolish  boy  still  eludes 
temptation.  Even  the  beautiful  witch  cannot 
lure  him.  All  is  fairy  play,  pantomimic  trans- 
formations, castles  that  crumble,  thunder-riven 
gardens,  and  the  whizzing  of  a  malignant  lance. 
Even  that  old  Gounod  ruse,  the  sign  of  the  cross, 
is  employed,  and  with  overpowering  effect.  Now 
what  possesses  a  generation  which  knows  Dar- 
win, has  read  Herbert  Spencer,  and  can  follow 
with  delight  the  unerring  logic  of  events  that  un- 
roll themselves  in  the  Ibsen  plays  —  what  pos- 
sesses this  generation  of  ours  to  sit  enthralled 
before  all  this  nebulosity  ? 

The  third  act  is  but  a  faint  replica  of  the 
first  —  without  its  vigor  or  novelty.  Here  the 
librettist  is  in  sore  straits.  So  he  drags  in 
Magdalen  washing  the  feet  of  Parsifal  which  is 
offensively  puerile.  We  again  see  the  scenery 
acting,  pantomimic  scenery,  and  once  more  we 
are  transported  to  the  Hall  of  the  Holy  Grail, 
where  the  music  of  Allegri,  Palestrina,  and  Vit- 
toria  is  marvellously  mimicked.  Wagner,  not 
being  a  strikingly  original  theme-maker,  always 
borrowed,  —  borrowed  even  from  Berlioz,  —  and 
the  results  of  his  borrowings  are  often  greater 
than  the  originals.  In  a  beatific  blaze  of  glory  — 
after  Parsifal  has  healed  the  King  —  this  sacred 
melodrama  ends,  and  the  spectator,  drugged  by 
95 


OVERTONES 

the  music,  confused  by  the  bells  chanting  the 
tortuous  story,  and  his  eyes  intoxicated  by  feasts 
of  color,  staggers  away  believing  that  he  has 
witnessed  a  great  work  of  art.  So  he  has,  —  the 
art  of  debauch  in  color,  tone,  and  gesture.  "  The 
highest  perfection  of  an  art,"  says  Ehlert,  "  is 
not  always  and  necessarily  the  greatest  massing 
together  of  forces.  It  depends  upon  entirely 
different  conditions.  The  flower  of  an  art  arises 
only  when  a  positively  artistic  individuality 
creates  that  particular  work  for  which  it  pos- 
sesses the  most  marked  and  exclusive  vocation." 
Now  Wagner  heaps  up  one  art,  one  idea,  upon 
another.  He  little  cared  for  the  dramatic  pro- 
prieties or  the  feelings  of  his  audience  when  he 
composed  Kundry,  a  ridiculous  hag,  an  Astarte, 
a  Herodias,  a  Meg  Merrilies,  and  a  Mary  Mag- 
dalen in  one.  She  is  Azucenawhen  she  reveals 
to  Parsifal  his  parentage  —  perhaps  Wagner 
had  heard  of  II  Trovatore ! — and  she  plays 
Potiphar's  wife  to  this  effeminate  lad.  She  is 
of  the  opera  operatic.  And  Klingsor  —  is  he  a 
creation,  this  hater  of  men  and  women  ?  —  why, 
he  is  nothing  else  but  any  giant  or  any  enchanter 
in  any  fairy  tale.  Parsifal,  when  he  is  not  a 
simulacrum  of  Christ  in  white  baptismal  robes, 
is  a  peculiarly  foolish  bore.  Without  Siegfried's 
buoyancy,  Wagner  tried  hard  to  dower  him  with 
Siegfried's  youth.  But  he  is  only  an  emasculate 
Siegfried.  The  corpse  of  Titurel  is  a  horrible 
idea  —  yet  it  fits  in  this  bogie-man's  play, 
96 


PARSIFAL 

Wagner,  after  all,  was  the  creature  of  his  cen- 
tury, an  incurable  Romantic,  with  all  the  love 
of  the  Romantics  for  knights,  mediaeval  mys- 
steries,  maidens  in  distress, —  in  this  case  a  callow 
boy,  —  magicians,  and  dead  men  who  tell  tales. 
The  scenery,  too,  never  comes  up  to  one's  reali- 
zation, and  as  usual  Wagner  oversteps  the  mark 
by  surrounding  his  hero  with  too  many  women. 
The  duo  with  Kundry  is  much  more  effective. 
The  eye  and  the  ear  can  grasp  the  situation  — 
a  stirringly  dramatic  one,  despite  the  morbid 
imagination  of  the  poet  who  could  in  his  search 
for  voluptuous  depravity  mingle  a  mother's  with 
a  courtesan's  kiss.  Here  Paris  itself  is  surpassed 
in  the  piquant  and  decadent.  Wagner's  admi- 
ration for  Baudelaire's  poetry  shows  itself  in 
this  incident.  By  the  magic  of  his  mother's 
name,  Kundry  evokes  a  maudlin  filial  passion, 
and  with  his  mother's  name  on  her  lips  she 
kisses  the  youth  into  the  first  consciousness  of 
his  virility  —  or  a  semblance  of  it,  for  at  no  time 
is  Parsifal  a  normal  young  man.  His  act  of 
renunciation,  in  his  particular  case,  denies  life. 

Again  I  ask,  What  is  the  lure  that  gathers 
multitudes  to  witness  this  most  nonsensical,  im- 
moral of  operas  ?  The  answer  is,  The  Music, 
always  The  Music.  Not  Wagner  at  the  flood- 
tide  of  his  musical  passion,  nor  the  composer  of 
Tristan  and  Isolde,  or  the  Ring  or  Die  Meister- 
singer  ;  yet  an  aged  wizard  who  had  retained  his 
old  arts  of  enchantment,  and  so  great  are  they 
h  97 


OVERTONES 

that  at  times  he  not  only  makes  one  forget  his 
book,  but  even  the  poverty  of  his  themes  — 
Parsifal  is  not  musically  original ;  rather  it  is  an 
extraordinary  synthesis  of  styles,  an  unique 
specimen  of  the  arts  of  combination,  adaptation, 
and  lofty  architectonics.  Let  us  glance  at  the 
score. 

Never  has  Wagner  been  so  bald  in  his  exposi- 
tion as  in  the  prelude.  But  its  simplicity  is 
deceptive.  The  Love  theme,  —  in  A  flat,  by 
von  Wolzogen  named  the  Love  F'east  motive, 
—  the  Grail  Hope  theme,  the  Dresden  Amen, 
and  the  Faith  theme,  —  these  and  a  subsidiary 
theme,  the  Saviour's  Lament,  about  comprise  this 
overture.  And  the  figure  of  the  Saviour's 
agony  contains  a  few  of  the  most  poignant  bars 
Wagner  ever  penned.  This  short  episode  is  in- 
finitely more  sincere  than  the  Faith  motive  — 
"  What  expression  would  a  man  like  Wagner 
find  for  such  an  experience?"  asks  Ehlert.  The 
Speech  of  Promise,  i.e.  the  prediction  "  Durch 
Mitleid  wissend,"  is  charmingly  prophetic,  but 
the  first  section  of  Act  I  drags  both  dramatically 
and  musically.  I  am  never  disappointed  in  the 
Kundry  music,  for  I  have  long  known  it  in 
Liszt's  B  minor  sonata,  and  before  Liszt  it  may 
be  found  in  the  opening  bars  of  Chopin's  B 
minor  sonata.  There  is  much  Liszt  in  this  score. 
The  trick  of  the  twice  repeated  modulation  into 
the  upper  diminished  third,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Faith  theme,  is  an  old  Lisztian  device.  Kun- 
98 


PARSIFAL 

dry's  chief  motive  is  to  be  found  in  the  B  minor 
sonata.  It  is  not  very  characteristic,  nor  is  the 
evocation  of  Arabia.  Kundry  enters  on  Val- 
kyrie pinions,  and  the  best  thing  she  does  is  her 
shuddering  screech  —  that  same  cry  of  distress 
so  cleverly  utilized  by  Massenet  in  Le  Cid. 
Wagner  draws  heavily  upon  the  second  act  of 
Die  Walkure.  Indeed  Parsifal  is  full  of  Wag- 
ner quotations  :  Lohengrin,  Tristan  and  Isolde, 
Die  Meistersinger  —  there  is  much  in  Gurne- 
manz's  bars  —  and  even  Gotterdammerung — 
the  Rhine  daughters'  music  is  heard  in  the  garden 
scene.  Amfortas's  suffering  motive  is  not  very 
convincing,  nor  are  we  impressed  by  the  Forest 
Murmur  with  its  canonic  appoggiaturas.  Ever 
this  essential  turn !  As  in  the  Good  Friday 
magic  spell  —  written  years  before  the  opera  — 
the  composer  echoes  Siegfried  and  Die  Meister- 
singer,—  the  first  fine,  careless  rapture  of  his 
wood-music  he  never  recaptured.  And  this  is 
quite  natural.  An  old  man,  Wagner  had  reached 
the  end  of  his  ammunition.  Many  blank  car- 
tridges are  fired  in  Parsifal.  The  Sorcery  motive 
with  its  Chopin-like  chromaticism  has  meaning ; 
but  I  confess  I  do  not  care  for  Parsifal's  motive, 
beautifully  as  it  is  developed.  It  lacks  the  bold, 
lusty,  clean-cut  vigor  of  his  young  Siegfried's 
horn  call.  Wagner  musically  was  always  true 
to  himself.  He  unconsciously  divined  the 
effeminacy  of  Parsifal's  nature,  and  his  music  is 
a  truer  psychological  barometer  than  all  the 
99 


OVERTONES 

learned  pundits  who  write  reams  about  the 
purity  of  Parsifal.  Kundry's  Service  theme — ■ 
in  "helpful"  thirds  —  is  by  no  means  so  ex- 
quisitely musical  as  the  Mitleid  motive  in  Die 
Walkure.  And  what  could  be  more  absurd 
than  the  use  of  the  Saviour's  Lament  motive  as 
the  dead  swan  is  reverently  carried  away.  The 
Herzeleide  motive  is  lovely  music,  especially 
when  it  is  thrown  into  high  relief  during  the 
next  act  by  Kundry's  blandishments.  The  fleet- 
ing appearance  of  the  Lohengrin  Swan  motive 
is  a  very  happy  idea. 

We  have  now  reached  the  last  part  of  the  first 
act  with  its  GlockentJievia,  its  laments  of  Am- 
fortas,  —  the  accents  of  woe  are  genuine,  —  and 
the  magnificent  tonal  panorama  of  boys'  voices, 
bells,  choral  music.  Here,  not  without  rever- 
ence, the  composer  has  successfully  emulated 
the  service  of  Rome.  The  tripartite  choral 
divisions  recall  both  Goethe's  Faust  and  the 
spherical  order  of  voices,  and  the  antiphonal 
choirs  of  mediaeval  cathedrals.  The  effect  is 
indescribable,  especially  when  the  pure,  sexless 
boys'  voices  are  heard  a  capclla.  The  consum- 
mation of  this  mystical  ecstasy  is  reached  when 
the  Grail  vase  is  slowly  waved  aloft.  One  real- 
izes that  Wagner's  genius,  which  so  often  gravi- 
tates pedulum-wise  between  the  sublime  and  the 
ridiculous,  here  approaches  the  former. 

Act  II,  in  which  the  ruling  key  seems  to  be  B 
minor,  —  as  A  flat  predominates  the  preceding 
IOO 


PARSIFAL 

act, — naturally  introduces  fewer  new  motives. 
The  Klingsor  theme,  first  heard  in  Gurnemanz's 
slightly  tedious  recital,  and  the  Kundry  theme  are 
most  in  evidence  in  the  stormy  prelude.  To  be 
quite  frank  I  always  find  the  Flower  Girls'  music 
a  disappointment.  The  Caress  valse  theme  is  a 
trifle  commonplace,  and  only  Wagner's  poly- 
phonic skill  lends  the  music  some  dignity.  The 
evocation  of  Kundry  by  Klingsor  in  the  open- 
ing scene  is  full  of  demoniacal  grandeur.  Wag- 
ner is  nothing  if  not  operatic,  and  here  he  shows 
that  his  old  Weber  skin  has  not  been  completely 
shed.  Kundry's  galloping  motive,  also  employed 
for  Parsifal,  is  the  familiar  Valkyrie  figure  modi- 
fied. I  heard  the  Erl-King  storm  through 
several  bars,  and  the  triplet  figuration  of  the 
Flower  Girls  is  from  a  trio  in  one  of  Schumann's 
symphonies  —  the  B  flat,  if  I  remember  aright. 

The  crowning  scene  of  this  act  —  one  is 
tempted  to  say  of  the  entire  work,  for  Wagner 
spreads  his  music  thin  over  a  wide  surface  —  is 
the  duo  of  Parsifal  and  Kundry.  Herein  the  en- 
tire gamut  of  passion,  maternal,  exquisite,  volup- 
tuous, is  traversed  by  a  master  hand.  And  never 
has  Wagner's  touch  been  so  sure.  Intellectually 
nothing  could  be  more  complete  than  this  de- 
lineation, morbid  and  morose  as  it  occasionally 
is.  In  a  dramatic  sense  it  saves  the  opera.  We 
hear  the  Parsifal,  the  Herzeleide  motives  —  and 
a  supplementary  Herzeleide  theme.  The  out- 
burst of  Parsifal  after  the  kiss  with  its  memo- 
IOI 


OVERTONES 

ries  of  Amfortas's  suffering  is  wonderful.  The 
Saviour's  theme,  Kundry's  Yearning  theme  and 
Self-Abandonment  motive,  are  all  made  up  of 
familiar  material.  Here  the  spinning  of  the 
web  into  something  strange  and  touching  is 
the  principal  virtue,  not  the  themes  themselves. 
Klingsor's  sudden  appearance  and  the  hurled 
lance  which  is  carried  out  in  the  score  by  harps 
glissando  through  two  octaves,  the  mourning 
cries  of  the  pretty  girls,  and  Parsifal's  final 
words  —  all  these  kaleidoscopic  effects  impress 
one  considerably ;  action  is  paramount.  Parsi- 
fal's music  in  Es  startt  der  Blick  dumpff  auf 
das  Heil'sgefass  may  arouse  the  indignation  of 
the  purist  with  its  direct  succession  of  the  G 
flat  major  and  D  minor  triads  (page  187  of  the 
vocal  score) ;  but  to  modern  ears  his  scheme  of 
harmonization  is  as  normal  as  the  book  is  ab- 
normal. In  a  Wagner  opera,  or,  if  you  will,  a 
music-drama,  everything  must  be  accepted,  dis- 
sonantal  harmonies  as  well.  This  composer  fol- 
lows every  curve  of  his  poem,  and  when  a 
situation  demands  jarring  ugliness,  he  freely 
offers  it.  Who  to-day  shall  say  what  is  or  what 
is  not  ugly  music  ? 

The  music  of  the  last  act  presents  little  novel 
thematic  material.  In  the  gloomy  prelude  we 
find  epitomized  the  wandering  of  Parsifal  in 
search  of  the  Grail  domain,  in  conjunction  with 
the  funeral  music  of  Titurel.  Again  the  static 
and  contemplative  forms  a  contrast  to  the  rapid 
102 


PARSIFAL 

action  of  the  preceding  scene.  The  very  pauses 
seem  pregnant  with  music.  And  I  must  halt 
here  a  moment  to  lay  my  tribute  of  admiration 
at  the  feet  of  MilkaTernina,  whose  Kundry  is  a 
dramatic  and  musical  creation  of  rare  imagina- 
tion and  technical  skill.  She  presents  three  dif- 
ferent women  —  we  are  perplexed  to  say  whether 
Kundry  defiant,  or  Kundry  seductive,  or  Kundry 
repentant  is  the  most  wonderful.  But  Ternina  is 
always  wonderful !  It  is  in  this  scene,  with  its 
sun-smitten  meadows,  its  worshipping  knight  and 
mournful  penitent,  that  I  agree  with  those  com- 
mentators who  perceive  the  profound  influence 
exerted  upon  Wagner  by  early  German  and 
Flemish  religious  pictorial  art.  Parsifal's  atti- 
tudes here  would  suit  a  Gothic  triptych  —  as 
M.  Charles  Tardieu  so  happily  expresses  it. 
There  is  little  movement,  all  gesture  has  been 
transferred  to  the  orchestra,  and  the  spectator 
seems  to  be  participating  in  one  of  those  mira- 
cle plays  or  viewing  the  stiff  pictures  of  a  Cima- 
bue  or  a  woodcut  after  Durer.  The  moving 
forest  and  the  final  scene  lose  because  of  repe- 
tition. But  what  was  the  poet  to  do  ?  Only  in 
Act  II  does  he  escape  the  lack  of  variety.  For 
instance,  in  Act  I  Parsifal  stands  for  a  long 
time  immobile,  with  his  back  to  the  audience, 
while  Kundry,  in  the  last  act,  utters  but  two 
words.  She  is  a  pantomimic  lay  figure  kept  on 
the  stage  to  emphasize  the  resemblance  between 
Jesus  and  Parsifal.  And  the  feet  washing  epi- 
103 


OVERTONES 

sode  is  absolutely  unnecessary.  It  does  not 
help  the  story.  Nowhere  but  in  Wagner  would 
all  this  mish-mash  of  gospel  narrative,  mediaeval 
romance,  and  Teutonic  philosophy  be  tolerated. 
Yet  the  Wagnerites  sit  through  it  all  as  if  listen- 
ing to  a  new  evangel  of  art,  philosophy,  and 
religion.  Perhaps  they  are.  In  America,  where 
new  religions  sprout  daily  as  do  potatoes  in  a 
dark  cellar,  slighter  causes  have  led  to  the 
foundation  of  a  religion  —  witness  the  rise  and 
growth  of  Mormonism.  If  religion  could  ever 
become  moribund,  perhaps  in  Wagner's  Parsi- 
fal would  be  found  the  crystallization  of  many  old 
faiths,  presented  in  a  concrete,  though  Wagner- 
ized,  form.  "  I  know  of  but  one  thing  more 
beautiful  than  Parsifal,"  wrote  Alfred  Ernest, 
and  approvingly  quoted  by  M.  Kufferath,  "  and 
that  is  any  low  mass  in  any  church."  And  in 
this  sentence  the  French  author  puts  his  finger 
on  the  weak  spot  of  Parsifal  —  its  lack  of  abso- 
lute sincerity.  No  matter  how  great  an  art 
work  it  may  be,  it  yet  lacks  the  truthful  note 
that  is  to  be  found  at  any  low  mass  in  a  Roman 
Catholic  church  —  about  the  most  unadorned 
service  I  can  remember.  With  all  its  grandeur, 
its  pathos,  its  conjuring  of  churchly  and  philo- 
sophical motives,  its  ravishing  pictures  and  mar- 
moreal attitudes,  Parsifal  falls  short  of  the  one 
thing  —  faith,  a  faith  you  may  find  in  any  road- 
side Bavarian  cabin.  We  have  seen  that  it  is 
weakest  musically  in  the  Faith  motive  of  the 
104 


PARSIFAL 

prelude,  and  ethically  it  suffers  from  the  same 
sterility.  All  the  scholarly  efforts  to  make  the 
work  an  ethical,  philosophical,  and  an  artistic 
message  are  futile.  Parsifal,  even  if  it  will 
"enjoy  a  small  immortality,"  must  remain  an 
opera,  a  cunning  spectacle  devised  by  a  man  of 
genius  in  the  twilight  of  his  powers.  It  is  Wag- 
ner's own  Gotterdammerung,  the  sunset  music 
of  his  singular  career. 

But  if  this  Parsifal  music  lacks  the  virile 
glow  and  imaginative  power  of  his  earlier  music, 
it  is  none  the  less  fascinating.  Over  all  hovers, 
like  the  dove  in  the  temple,  a  rich  mellowness, 
a  soothing  quality  that  is  the  reverse  of  his 
stormy,  disquieting,  youthful  art.  It  really 
seems  as  if  Pity,  pity  for  the  tragedy  of  exist- 
ence, for  the  misery  of  all  animated  beings, 
had  filled  parts  of  the  score  with  a  soothing 
balm.  The  muted  pauses,  the  golden  stream 
of  tone,  and  the  almost  miraculous  musicianship 
fill  the  listener  with  awe.  Never  before  has 
Wagner's  technical  mastery  come  to  such  a  tri- 
umphant blossoming.  And  the  partition  is  cov- 
ered with  miniatures  that  excite  admiration  both 
for  their  workmanship  and  their  musical  mean- 
ings. It  was  Nietzsche  who  first  called  critical 
attention  to  the  Lilliputian  delicacy  of  Wagner's 
music.  A  fresco  painter,  he  yet  finds  time  to 
execute  the  most  minute  and  tender  jewel-like 
bits,  that  are  lost  sight  and  sound  of  at  the  first 
hearing.  Never  has  Wagner's  instrumentation 
105 


OVERTONES 

been  so  smoothly  sonorous,  so  well  mixed,  so 
synthetic.  It  recalls  richly  embroidered  altar 
cloths  or  Gobelin  tapestry.  Weaving  similes 
force  themselves  upon  the  hearer  when  describ- 
ing this  marvellous  and  modern  polyphonic  art. 
But  how  tell  of  the  surge  and  undertow  of  his 
melting,  symphonious  narrative  !  It  flashes 
with  all  the  tints  of  a  Veronese,  of  a  Makart, 
and  then  appear  in  processional  solemnity  the 
great  flat  spaces  and  still  figures  of  some  medi- 
aeval, low-toned,  distemper  painter.  Painting 
and  weaving  —  always  these  two  arts  !  But 
there  is  not  the  same  passionate  excess  in  deco- 
ration, the  same  tropical  splendor,  that  we  find  in 
the  earlier  Wagner.  Venus  wooes  Tannhauser 
in  more  heated  accents  than  does  Kundry  Parsi- 
fal. And  Kundry  is  the  depraved  woman  of  all 
art,  for  Kundry's  quiver  of  temptations  is  more 
subtle,  more  decadent. 

The  correspondence  of  King  Ludwig  and 
Wagner,  of  Ludwig  and  Josef  Kainz,  the  actor, 
throws  much  light  on  the  enigmatic  character  of 
Parsifal.  Wagner  needed  money  and  encour- 
agement, badly.  So  it  is  not  difficult  to  con- 
ceive of  him  playing  up  to  every  romantic 
extravagance  of  the  young  king —  "  le  seul  vrai 
roi  de  ce  siecle,"  as  Paul  Verlaine  poetically 
called  the  monarch,  whose  madness  admirably 
matched  his  own.  Read  in  this  sense,  the  psy- 
chology of  Kundry's  kiss  and  its  repelling  effect 
and  its  arousing  of  pity  for  Amfortas  in  Par- 
106 


PARSIFAL 

sifal  is  no  longer  a  mystery.  Wagner  never 
erred  in  his  morbid  musical  psychology,  and  he 
thus  symbolized  Amfortas  —  Wagner  —  as  being 
rescued  from  suffering  by  Parsifal  —  Ludwig. 
Wagner  had  been  ever  an  ungrateful  man,  but 
for  the  King  he  entertained  the  most  exalted 
sentiment  of  gratitude.  There  is  a  psychiatric 
literature  on  this  esoteric  subject  in  German  and 
French  beginning  with  Oskar  Panizza,  ending 
with  the  remarkable  study  of  Hanns  Fuchs,  en- 
titled Richard  Wagner. 

Parsifal  will  long  remain  a  rare  and  stimulat- 
ing spectacle  to  those  for  whom  religious  feel- 
ing must  be  dramatized  to  be  endurable.  The 
stern  simplicities  of  doctrinal  truths  have  no  at- 
traction for  such.  Wagner,  luxuriously  Byzan- 
tine in  his  faiths,  erected  a  lordly  pleasure  drama 
in  which  the  mystically  inclined,  the  admirer  of 
theatrical  pomps,  and  the  esoteric  worshipper 
could  all  find  solace,  amusement,  and  consola- 
tion. Yet  Parsifal's  pale  virtue  can  never  stir 
us  to  higher  issues,  as  do  the  heroic  sacrifices  of 
Tannhauser  or  Senta.  Parsifal  is  the  predesti- 
nated one,  predestined  to  save  the  life  of  the  King. 
Lacking  freedom  of  will,  he  is  not  a  human  be- 
ing that  provokes  our  sympathy  — but  why  de- 
mand logic,  even  dramatic  logic,  of  Wagner  ? 
He  was  first  a  musician,  then  a  poet  and  a  phi- 
losopher; and  in  the  last  of  these  three  was  least. 
Parsifal  is  his  final  offering  to  the  world.  It  is 
the  work  of  a  man  who  had  outlived  his  genius. 
107 


OVERTONES 

Nietzsche  quotes  with  approval  the  exclamation 
of  a  musician  :  "  I  hate  Wagner,  but  I  no  longer 
stand  any  other  music."  We  are  all  Wagnerians 
whether  we  rebel  at  Parsifal  or  not. 


1 08 


Ill 

NIETZSCHE    THE    RHAPSODIST 

Tell  me,  where  is  justice  to  be  found  which  is  love 
with  seeing  eyes  ?  —  Also  sprach  Zarathustra. 

I 

A  sane  and  complete  estimate  of  the  life  and 
philosophical  writings  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche 
has  yet  to  be  made  in  English.  Mentally  dead 
since  1889,  his  death,  in  a  private  retreat  at 
Weimar  in  1900,  created  little  stir;  yet  we  pre- 
dict that  this  great,  if  rhapsodical  thinker,  will 
occupy  a  place  in  the  pantheon  of  philosophers. 
Like  Emerson,  he  formulated  no  system ;  he  is 
a  stimulus  to  thought,  an  antiseptic  critic  of  all 
philosophies,  religions,  theologies,  and  moral 
systems,  an  intellectual  rebel,  a  very  Lucifer 
among  ancient  and  modern  thinkers. 

His  life,  barring  his  friendship  with  Wagner, 
and  its  sad  conclusion,  is  rather  barren  of  interest 
or  incident.  It  was  a  fiery  soul  tragedy ;  out- 
wardly the  world  saw  a  quiet,  very  reserved, 
almost  timid  man  of  cultivated  bearing  and 
disinclined  to  the  pursuits  of  the  ambitious. 
He  was  born  at  Rocken,  near  Liitzen,  Octo- 
109 


OVERTONES 

ber  15,  1844.  His  father  was  a  clergyman; 
indeed  he  descended  from  a  long  line  of  clerical 
ancestors,  which  possibly  accounts  for  the 
austere  strain  in  the  man.  This  philosopher 
with  a  hammer,  this  demolisher  of  Antichrist, 
this  writer  who  outraged  all  religious  Europe, 
was  a  man  of  pure,  upright  life,  a  scholar,  a 
gentleman,  a  poet.  Taking  up  philology  mainly 
as  a  makeshift,  he  occupied  the  chair  of  classical 
philology  at  the  University  of  Basle.  His  weak 
eyesight  —  his  life  long  he  was  a  sufferer  from 
headaches,  a  weak  stomach,  and  crabbed  nerves 

—  drove  him  to  a  retirement,  during  which  he 
busied  himself  with  art  and  philosophy.  The 
Birth  of  Tragedy  in  1872  attracted  Richard 
Wagner's  attention,  for  here  was  a  partisan  not 
to  be  despised.  In  1876  Nietzsche  published 
Richard  Wagner  in  Bayreuth,  and  Wagnerism 
had  found  its  philosophical  exponent.  A  friend- 
ship, ideal  in  its  quality,  grew  up  between  com- 
poser and  thinker.  But  the  sensitive  nature  of 
Nietzsche  could  brook  no  rivals,  and  he  soon  fell 
away  from  Wagner  and  Bayreuth.  Many  have 
sought  to  explain  this  defection.  Nietzsche's 
devoted  sister,  Elizabeth  Forster-Nietzsche,  ac- 
cused Richard  and  Cosima  Wagner  of  treachery, 
while  Wagner,  on  his  part,  found  this  intense 
young  disciple  a  trifle  irksome.  He  could  not 
stir,  could  not  talk  sportively  —  as  was  his  wont 

—  could  not  make  bad  puns,  could  not  associate 
with  others  without  a  sorrowful  apparition  warn- 
no 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

ing  him  that  he  was  not  true  to  himself,  not 
true  to  his  higher  nature.  Wagner,  being  a 
natural  man,  sometimes  a  coarse  and  worldly- 
man,  resented  this  spiritual  caretaker's  solici- 
tude, and  so  in  the  rush  and  excitement  of 
Bayreuth  in  1876  he  was  forced  to  forget  his 
Nietzsche.  Then  the  usual  thing  happened : 
the  other  one  went  off  in  a  sulk,  and  Wagner- 
ism  had  lost  its  most  fanatical  adherent. 

The  truth  in  this  affair  is  not  difficult  to  dis- 
cern. When  Wagner  was  still  undiscovered  — 
that  is,  the  latter-day  Wagner  —  Nietzsche 
sailed  his  soul  abroad  for  spiritual  adventures 
and  found  the  composer  of  Tristan  and  Isolde 
full  of  spiritual  irony.  Exclusive,  haughty, 
jealous  —  a  noble  sort  of  jealousy  —  he  pub- 
lished the  good  news  to  the  world.  Then  the 
mob,  hoi  polloi,  began  to  buy  excursion  tickets 
to  Bayreuth,  and  Nietzsche  shudderingly  with- 
drew. Wagner's  music  was  no  longer  unique, 
no  longer  to  be  savored  by  the  intellectually 
aristocratic  few.  So  he  sailed  his  bark  for 
newer,  rarer,  stranger  enterprises  and  discov- 
ered —  Nietzsche.  After  that  the  madhouse 
yawned  for  him,  and  the  world  lost  a  wonderful 
man,  an  ecstatic,  semi-deranged  man,  a  free- 
thinker who  out-topped  all  freethinkers,  one  of 
the  greatest  individualists  since  Stirner,  and  a 
soul  of  poetic  richness.  In  1888  Der  Fall 
Wagner  was  published  and  Nietzsche's  friends 
and  foes  alike  noted  the  decline  of  a  brilliant 
1 1 1 


OVERTONES 

intellect.  The  book  is  extraordinary.  In  it  are 
flashes  of  dazzling  fugitive  ideation  ;  but  it  lacks 
logic,  nobility  of  design  ;  above  all,  it  lacks  co- 
herency. Wagner  is  as  bitterly  arraigned  and 
attacked  as  the  apostle  of  degeneration,  as  before 
he  was  hailed  as  the  Dispenser  of  the  New  Evan- 
gel of  music,  poetry,  and  philosophy.  It  is  a  pity 
that  this  violent  work  should  have  introduced 
Nietzsche  to  the  English-speaking  world.  It  is 
too  fantastic,  too  ill-balanced,  to  serve  as  a  digni- 
fied polemic,  or  yet  as  a  corrective.  In  Germany 
it  but  strengthened  Wagner's  cause.  Yet  its 
occasional  meteoric  lucidity,  its  wit,  its  blows 
with  a  hammer,  are  at  times  extremely  diverting. 
The  last  of  his  writings,  it  should  be  read  the 
last.  We  say  the  last,  for  his  Transvaluation 
of  All  Values  —  the  first  part  of  which  is  Anti- 
christ, need  not  concern  us  here  —  was  begun 
when  the  author  was  struck  down.  After 
Wagner,  Bizet ;  after  Parsifal,  Carmen ;  for 
he  swore  that  Bizet  was  the  greater,  Bizet  the 
creator  of  La  Gaya  Scienza.  Nietzsche  had  to 
swing  to  the  other  extreme  musically  after  his 

secession  from  Wagnerism.     But  Bizet ! 

The  Nietzsche  philosophical  pedigree  is  not 
difficult  to  trace.  He  comes  intellectually  from 
Max  Stirner  —  especially  Stirner — Bakounine, 
the  anarchist,  and  Karl  Gutzkow.  As  mad  a 
Schopenhauerian  as  Richard  Wagner,  he  threw 
over  his  allegiance  to  the  Master  Pessimist  when 
he  discovered  that  there  can  be  no  will  to  live 
I  12 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

without  previous  existence,  and  existence  pre- 
supposes will.  It  is  the  Will  to  Power  that  is 
Nietzsche's  cardinal  doctrine,  and  this  will  to 
power  is  neither  evil  nor  good,  for  our  Siegfried 
among  philosophers  would  transvalue  all  moral 
values.  In  his  divagations  with  a  hammer  —  he 
called  himself  the  Philosopher  with  a  Hammer — 
Nietzsche  smashed  all  idols,  old,  new,  and  to 
come.  He  likewise,  in  his  intellectual  fury  and 
craving  after  universal  knowledge,  smashed  the 
exceeding  delicate  mechanism  of  his  own  brain. 
Boasting  of  Polish  blood,  he,  like  Poland,  repre- 
sented a  disintegrated  individualism.  Nietzsky 
was  said  to  be  the  ancestral  name,  and  with  it 
was  inherited  all  the  pride  of  his  nationality. 
He  loathed  the  common  herd  more  than  Horace, 
more  than  Flaubert  —  to  whom  life  was  but  a 
bad  smell.  Herbert  Spencer's  philosophical 
moderation,  the  tepid  piety  of  the  middle  classes, 
he  equally  scorned.  He  would  have  us  all 
aristocrats  in  mind  and  body,  and  Wagner's 
snobbery —  so  necessary  to  his  worldly  advance- 
ment —  filled  Nietzsche  with  disgust.  No  king, 
no  pope,  no  democracy,  could  bind  his  rebellious 
intellect.  Like  Ibsen's  Brand  he  sought  ever 
the  steepest  heights.  A  lonely  soul  is  Zara- 
thustra — ■  Nietzsche,  and  one  of  the  most  sad- 
dening scenes  in  Also  sprach  Zarathustra  '"A 
(begun  in  1883,  finished  in  1885,  but  not  pub- 
lished until  1892)  is  his  finding  of  the  animals, 
the  pope  and  Wagner  worshipping  the  Jackass 
1  113 


OVERTONES 

according  to  the  ritual  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
church.  It  was  Wagner's  Parsifal  that  stung 
him  to  madness.  The  anti-naturalism,  the  mysti- 
cism, the  attempted  revival  in  theatric  form  of  — 
to  him  —  hierarchical  superstitions  and  various 
abnormalities,  shocked  the  soul  of  Nietzsche. 
In  his  wonderful  prose  epic,  Wagner  appears 
masked  as  the  Wizard,  the  prophet  of  pity,  of 
redemption  of  all  the  formulas  hated  by  this 
extraordinary  thinker. 

It  is  mere  childishness,  or  else  bigotry,  to 
point  at  Nietzsche's  end  as  the  moral  tag  of  his 
life.  If  he  had  lived  during  the  Middle  Ages, 
either  he  would  have  been  burnt  alive  or  else 
have  proved  a  formidable  rival  to  some  angelic 
doctor.  But  living  in  the  nineteenth  century,  a 
century  of  indifference  to  men  of  his  ardent  tem- 
perament, he  erected  his  own  stake  and  fagots 
and  the  mad  genius  within  him  burnt  up  his 
mind.  While  he  would  not  have  so  astonished 
the  world  if  born  to  work  in  the  dogmatic  har- 
ness of  the  Roman  Catholic  church,  yet  its 
discipline  might  have  quieted  his  throbbing 
nerves,  and  perhaps  given  the  faith  a  second 
Rosmini. 

A  magnificent  dialectician,  Nietzsche  threw 
overboard  all  metaphysical  baggage.  He  de- 
spised the  jargon  of  Schoolman  and  modern 
philosophers.  For  him  Hegel  was  a  verbalistic 
bat,  blind  to  the  realities  of  life  ;  and  it  is  just 
at  this  point  that  the  influence  of  the  insurgent 
114 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

has  been  so  provocative  of  good.  He  has  over- 
turned the  barriers  of  a  repulsive  metaphysical 
terminology  and  dared  to  be  naked  and  natural, 
though  a  philosopher.  He  erected  no  system, 
no  vast,  polyphonic  edifice  with  winding  stair- 
case and  darkened  chambers.  Nietzsche  made 
no  philosophical  formula ;  rather,  his  formula  is 
an  image,  the  image  of  a  lithe  dancer.  The 
writer  of  this  resume  pretends  to  see  the  begin- 
nings of  Nietzsche's  philosophy,  or  poetry,  in 
the  second  part  of  Faust.  When  Euphorion, 
that  child  of  Helena  and  Faust,  of  Beauty  and 
Intellect,  the  merging  of  the  Classical  and 
Romantic,  sings :  — 

Let  me  be  skipping, 
Let  me  be  leaping, 
To  soar  and  circle 
Through  ether  sweeping, 
Is  now  the  passion 
That  me  hath  won, 

he  but  set  the  pace  for  Nietzsche,  the  Dancing 
Philosopher.  Dancing  blithely  over  a  tight  rope 
stretched  between  two  eternities,  the  Past  and 
the  Future,  Man,  gay,  and  unafraid,  views  the 
depths  of  Time  and  Space.  It  is  "  Man  who  is 
a  rope  connecting  animal  and  Beyond  Man " 
(Ubermensch).  "  He  is  a  bridge,  not  a  goal ; 
a  transition  and  a  destruction."  These  seem- 
ingly startling  statements,  which  may  be  found 
in  Thus  spake  Zarathustra,  are,  after  all,  noth- 
ing new ;  Christianity,  with  its  angels  and  Dar- 
ii5 


OVERTONES 

winism,  with  its  bold  hints  at  future  evolutions 
and  developments,  do  but  say  the  same  things, 
each  in  its  own  way.  But  Nietzsche,  like  his 
beloved  Euphorion,  must  needs  graze  the  rim 
of  the  sun  in  his  flight,  and  Icarus-wise  come 
tumbling  to  earth  —  and  a  Weimar  retreat. 

The  Titanism  of  Nietzsche,  might  over  right, 
power  over  weakness,  impels  him  to  hate  all 
weakness,  and  Christianity,  he  declares,  is  a 
weakness,  a  degenerate  sort  of  Judaism,  compli- 
cated with  the  teachings  of  Greek  mystagogues. 
He  says  that  the  first  and  only  Christian  was 
nailed  to  the  cross,  and  this  should  please  the 
heart  of  Tolstoy.  Bolder  still  is  Nietzsche's  wish 
that  a  Dostoievsky  might  have  depicted  the 
Christ  in  all  his  childlike  innocence  and  Godlike 
love.  Nietzsche  worships  force  and  hates  slave- 
morality,  i.e.  all  modern  religions,  in  which  pity 
for  the  weak  is  basic.  To  him  the  symbol  of  the 
crucifix  is  degrading,  a  symbol  of  degenerating 
races.  A  very  Spartan,  he  would  have  the  great 
blond  barbarian  once  more  trample,  Attila-like, 
the  blood-stained  soil  of  Europe  and  Asia,  sparing 
none.  Vcb  Victis  !  "  What  is  best  belongeth  to 
my  folk  and  myself.  And  if  it  is  not  given  to 
us,  we  take  it,  the  best  food,  the  purest  sky,  the 
strongest  thoughts,  the  most  beautiful  women." 
Thus  spake  Zarathustra,  and  the  voice  is 
Nietzsche's,  but  the  hands  are  the  hands  of 
Esau  —  Bismarck  :   Blood  and  Iron  ! 

It  is  in  Also  sprach  Zarathustra  that  the 
116 


NIETZSCHE   THE   RHAPSODIST 

genius  of  Nietzsche  is  best  studied.  Like  the 
Buddhistic  Tripatka,  it  is  a  book  of  highly 
colored  Oriental  aphorisms,  interrupted  by  lofty 
lyric  outbursts.  It  is  an  ironic,  enigmatic  rhe- 
torical rhapsody,  the  Third  Part  of  a  half-mad 
Faust.  In  it  may  be  seen  flowing  all  the  cur- 
rents of  modern  cultures  and  philosophies,  and 
if  it  teaches  anything  at  all,  it  teaches  the 
wisdom  and  beauty  of  air,  sky,  waters,  and  earth, 
and  of  laughter,  not  Pantagruelian,  but  "  holy 
laughter."  The  love  of  earth  is  preached  in 
rapturous  accents.  A  Dionysian  ecstasy  anoints 
the  lips  of  this  latter-day  Sibyl  on  his  tripod, 
when  he  speaks  of  earth.  He  is  intoxicated 
with  the  fulness  of  its  joys.  No  gloomy  monas- 
ticism,  no  denial  of  the  will  to  live,  no  futile  think- 
ing about  thinking,  —  so  despised  by  Goethe,  — 
no  denial  of  grand  realities,  may  be  found  in 
the  curriculum  of  this  Bacchantic  philosopher. 
A  Pantheist,  he  is  also  a  poet  and  seer  like 
William  Blake,  and  marvels  at  the  symbol  of 
nature,  "the  living  garment  of  the  Deity"  — 
Nietzsche's  deity,  of  course.  It  is  this  realistic, 
working  philosophy  —  if  philosophy  it  be  in  the 
academic  sense  —  that  has  endeared  Nietzsche  to 
the  newer  generation,  that  has  set  his  triumphant 
standard  on  the  very  threshold  of  the  new  cen- 
tury. After  the  metaphysical  cobweb  spinners, 
the  Hegels,  Fichtes,  Schellings,  after  the  dreary 
pessimism  of  the  soured  Schopenhauer,  —  whose 
pessimism  was  temperamental,  as  is  all  pessi- 
117 


OVERTONES 

mism,  so  James  Sully  has  pointed  out,  —  after 
many  negations  and  stumblings,  the  vigorous 
affirmations  of  this  Nihilist  are  stimulating,  sug- 
gestive, refreshing,  especially  in  Germany,  the 
stronghold  of  philosophical  and  sentimental  Phi- 
listinism. Not  reward,  but  the  sheer  delight  of 
living,  of  conquering  self,  of  winning  victories 
in  the  teeth  of  defeat,  — thus  spake  the  wisdom 
of  Nietzsche. 

For  English-speaking  readers  the  many  at- 
tacks on  Nietzsche  have  placed  the  philosopher 
under  the  cloud  of  a  peculiar  misconception. 
Viciously  arguing  that  a  man  in  a  madhouse 
could  only  produce  a  mad  philosophy,  his  assail- 
ants forgot  that  it  was  Nietzsche's  very  intensity 
of  mental  vision,  his  phenomenal  faculty  of  at- 
tention, his  hopeless  attempt  to  square  the  circle 
of  things  human,  that  brought  about  his  sad 
plight.  If  he  had  not  thought  so  madly,  so 
strenuously,  if  he  had  put  to  slumber  his  irrita- 
ble conscience,  his  insatiable  curiosity,  with  cur- 
rent anodynes,  Nietzsche  might  have  been  alive 
to-day. 

In  Also  sprach  Zarathustra  he  consciously  or 
unconsciously  vied  with  Goethe  in  Faust ;  with 
Wagner's  Ring,  with  Balzac's  Comedie  Hu- 
maine,  with  Ibsen's  Brand,  with  Tolstoy's  War 
and  Peace,  with  Senancour's  Oberman,  with 
Browning's  Paracelsus.  It  is  the  history  of  his 
soul,  as  Leaves  of  Grass  is  Whitman's  —  there 
are  some  curious  parallelisms  between  these 
118 


NIETZSCHE    THE    RHAPSODIST 

two  subjective  epics.  It  is  intimate,  yet  hints 
at  universality ;  it  contains  some  of  Amiel's  in- 
trospection and  some  of  Baudelaire's  morbidity ; 
half  mad,  yet  exhorting,  comforting ;  Hamlet 
and  John  Bunyan. 

Nietzsche  then  is  a  critical  mode  of  viewing 
the  universe,  rather  than  creator  of  a  formal 
philosophy.  He  has  set  his  imprint  on  all 
European  culture,  from  the  dream  novels  of 
that  Italian  of  the  Renaissance,  the  new  Cellini, 
Gabriele  d'Annunzio,  to  the  Pole  Przybyszewski, 
who  has  transformed  Nietzsche  into  a  very 
Typhoon  of  emotion.  The  musician  Heinrich 
Pudor  has  imitated  the  master  in  his  attacks 
on  modern  music;  while  Gerhart  Hauptmann, 
Richard  Dehmel  —  all  young  Germany,  young 
France,  has  patterned  after  the  great  Immoralist, 
as  he  chose  to  call  himself.  Among  the  com- 
posers affected  by  him  we  find  Richard  Strauss, 
not  attempting  to  set  the  philosophy  of  Nietzsche 
to  music  —  as  many  wrongfully  suppose  —  but 
arranging,  as  in  a  huge  phantasmagoria,  the 
emotions  excited  by  the  close  study  of  Thus 
spake  Zarathustra.  And  a  many-colored  piece 
of  music  it  is,  full  of  frowning  mountains,  fra- 
grant meads,  and  barren,  ugly,  waste  places. 

Nietzsche  met  the  fate  of  all  rebels  from  Lu- 
cifer to  Byron  —  neglect  and  obloquy.  With 
something  of  Heraclitus,  of  Democritus,  of 
Bruno  Giordano,  of  Luther  in  him,  there  was 
allied  a  sensitivity  almost  Chopin's.  The  com- 
119 


OVERTONES 

bination  is  a  poor  one  for  practical  purposes  ; 
so  the  brain  died  before  the  body, — humanity 
cannot  transcend  itself.  Notwithstanding  all 
his  contradictions,  limitations,  cloudland  rhap- 
sodies, aversion  from  the  banal,  despite  his 
futile  flights  into  the  Inane,  his  word-weaving, 
his  impossible  premisses  and  mad  conclusions, 
the  thunder-march  of  his  ideas,  the  brilliancy 
and  polish  of  his  style  —  the  greatest  German 
prose  since  Schopenhauer's  —  have  insured 
Nietzsche  immortality  ;  as  immortality  goes 
among  world  thinkers :  fifty  years  of  quotation 
and  then  —  the  biographical  dictionaries. 

Friedrich  Nietzsche  is,  as  Havelock  Ellis  de- 
clares, "  a  great  aboriginal  force  "  ;  perhaps,  with 
Max  Stirner,  the  greatest  in  the  last  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  And  that  same  Stirner  is 
the  true  stock  from  which  Nietzsche  sprang 
—  Stirner  who  dared  to  say,  "  My  truth  is  the 
truth." 

Nietzsche  died  August  28,  1900,  literally  the 
Morgcnrothe  of  the  new  century.  It  was  at 
Weimar,  once  the  home  of  Goethe  and  Liszt. 
Nietzsche  was  in  an  insane  asylum  from  1888. 
Dr.  Hermann  Turck  asserts  that  his  work  was 
done  during  a  comparatively  sane  interval  be- 
tween two  incarcerations.  In  1868  he  met 
Richard  Wagner,  and  under  the  spell  of  his 
synthetic  genius  he  wrote  Die  Geburt  der  Tra- 
godie  aus  dem  Geist  der  Musik,  and  dedicated 
it  to  Wagner,  his  "sublime  forerunner."  Every 
120 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

line  of  it,  he  declares  in  the  preface,  was  "  con- 
ceived in  close  communion  with  Wagner."  And 
let  those  who  know  only  the  later  Nietzsche 
casually  read  this  essay  to  be  convinced  of  its 
sanity,  its  acuity,  its  penetrating  originality. 
Here  we  find  the  enthusiastic,  impetuous  youth, 
fresh  from  his  Grecian  studies,  a  valiant  cham- 
pion of  Hellenistic  culture,  an  opponent  of  the 
orientalization  of  modern  life  and  thought. 
Twelve  years  later  he  discovered  in  Parsifal  this 
very  despised  orientalization,  and  did  not  hesitate 
to  say  so  in  The  Wagner  Case,  that  fatal  illustra- 
tion of  George  Moore's  pithy  axiom  :  When  we 
change  our  opinions  we  change  our  friends. 

The  man  who  marshalled  in  the  most  deadly 
array  of  attack  his  arguments  against  Wagner- 
ism  is  also  the  man  who  wrote  the  most  brilliant 
book  of  all  on  Wagner.  Richard  Wagner  in 
Bayreuth  is  a  masterpiece  of  critical  rhapsody. 
The  sister  who  nursed  the  sick-brained  man  for 
twelve  years,  Frau  Friedrich  Forster-Nietzsche, 
tells  the  story  of  the  dissensions  in  this  friend- 
ship, a  friendship  that  could  have  endured  only 
through  a  miracle.  Both  men  had  "  nerves  "  in 
a  highly  irritable  condition  ;  and,  while  Wagner 
had  weathered  the  storm  and  had,  perforce,  de- 
veloped a  stout  integument  of  disdain,  Nietzsche 
had  always  remained  the  sensitive,  morbid,  clois- 
tered student.  There  is  no  doubt  that  Richard 
Wagner,  at  the  triumphant  culmination  of  his 
life-work,  was  an  arrogant,  exacting,  and  jealous 

121 


OVERTONES 

being.  Wahnfried  was,  as  it  now  is,  a  Star 
Chamber,  where  the  VeJimgericJit  j  udged  swiftly, 
fiercely.  Here  is  one  story  told  by  the  sister 
and  quoted  by  H.  E.  Krehbiel  in  his  too  brief 
review  of  the  episode :  — 

My  brother  and  I  heard  the  Triumphlied  of 
Brahms  in  the  Bale  Cathedral.  It  was  a  splendid 
performance  and  pleased  Fritz  very  much.  When 
he  went  to  Bayreuth  in  August,  he  took  the  piano- 
forte arrangement  with  him,  apparently  in  the  naive 
belief  that  Wagner  would  like  it.  I  say  "  appar- 
ently," for  upon  later  reflection  it  has  occurred  to 
me  that  this  red-bound  Triumphlied  was  meant  as 
a  sort  of  goad,  and  therefore  Wagner's  prodigious 
wrath  seems  to  have  been  not  altogether  groundless. 
So  I  will  leave  the  continuation  of  the  tale  to  Wag- 
ner, who  had  an  exquisite  fashion  of  satirizing 
himself :  — 

"  Your  brother  set  this  red  book  on  the  piano ; 
whenever  I  went  into  the  drawing-room,  the  red 
thing  stared  me  in  the  face  ;  it  exasperated  me,  as 
a  red  rag  to  a  bull.  Perhaps  I  guessed  that  Nietzsche 
wanted  it  to  say  to  me,  '  See  here  another  man  who 
can  turn  out  something  good  !  '  and  one  evening  I 
broke  out  with  a  vengeance." 

W'agner  had  a  hearty  laugh  at  the  recollection. 
"What  did  my  brother  say?"  I  asked  in  alarm. 
"  Nothing  at  all,"  answered  Wagner.  "  He  simply 
blushed,  and  looked  at  me  in  astonishment  and 
modest  dignity.  I  would  give  a  hundred  thousand 
marks  to  have  such  splendid  manners  as  this 
Nietzsche,  always  distinguished,  always  well  bred  ; 
122 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

it's  an  immense  advantage  in  the  world."  That 
story  of  Wagner's  came  back  to  my  mind  at  this 
time  (spring  of  1875).  "Fritz,"  I  said,  "why 
didn't  you  tell  me  that  tale  about  Brahms's  Tri- 
umphlied  ?  Wagner  related  the  whole  thing  to  me 
himself."  Fritz  looked  straight  before  him  and  held 
his  tongue.  At  last  he  said,  beneath  his  breath, 
"  Lisbeth,  then  Wagner  was  not  great." 

Another  time  Wagner  interfered  with  a  walk- 
ing tour  that  Nietzsche  had  planned  to  take 
with  the  son  of  Felix  Mendelssohn,  a  professor 
at  Freiburg.  The  young  philosopher  winced, 
but  gave  in  to  the  elder  man's  request.  His 
commonplace  book  reveals  his  secret  irritation. 
Here  is  a  specimen  of  his  early  revolt  from  the 
banner  of  Bayreuth  :  — 

How  infinitely  purer  is  the  soul  of  a  Bach  or  a 
Beethoven  in  comparison  with  the  soul  of  a  Wagner. 
In  the  same  sense  as  Goethe  was  a  painter  strayed 
from  his  true  vocation,  and  Schiller  an  orator,  Wag- 
ner is  an  actor  manque.  .   .   . 

Who  are  the  men  who  swell  the  ranks  of  his 
partisans?  Singers  who  wish  to  appear  more  inter- 
esting by  acting  their  parts  as  well  as  singing  them 
to  produce  the  maximum  of  effect  with  a  minimum 
of  voice  ;  composers  who  hoodwink  the  public  by  a 
sort  of  glamour  into  a  non-critical  attitude ;  audi- 
ences who  are  bored  by  the  old  masters  and  find  in 
Wagner  a  stimulant  for  their  jaded  nerves. 

Yet  earlier  he  had  written  in  such  an  eloquent 
strain  as  this  :  — 

123 


OVERTONES 

Wagner  is  never  more  Wagner  than  when  his 
difficulties  increase  tenfold,  and  he  triumphs  over 
them  with  all  the  legislative  zeal  of  a  victorious 
ruler,  subduing  rebellious  elements,  reducing  them 
to  simple  rhythms,  and  imprinting  the  supreme 
power  of  his  will  on  a  vast  multitude  of  contending 
emotions.  ...  It  can  be  said  of  him  that  he  has 
endowed  everything  in  nature  with  a  language.  He 
believed  that  nothing  need  be  dumb.  He  cast  his 
plummet  into  the  mystery  of  sunrise,  forest  and 
mountain,  mist  and  night  shadows,  and  learned  that 
all  these  cherished  intense  longing  for  a  voice. 

Houston  Chamberlain  believes  that  when  the 
panegyrics  and  attacks  upon  Wagner  have  been 
consigned  to  that  eternal  limbo,  the  dust-heap, 
Nietzsche's  Richard  Wagner  in  Bayreuth,  will 
still  survive.  Perhaps  back  of  the  wounded 
vanity  was  the  usual  feeling  that  in  Bayreuth 
and  Wagner  his  last  illusion  had  vanished  ;  mad- 
ness was  coming  on  apace.  Even  his  sister 
admits  that  he  held  aloof  during  the  rejoicing 
and  festivities  of  1876,  and  Wagner's  Gcmiith- 
lichkeit  expressed  in  exuberant  spirits  (prob- 
ably he  stood  on  his  head  more  than  once  in 
those  gay  times  ;  it  was  a  trick  of  his,  as  Praeger 
relates,  —  his  punning,  his  advice  to  his  shy, 
shrinking  disciple  to  get  him  a  wife,  useless 
advice  to  this  ardent  upholder  of  ideal  friend- 
ship), and  all  these  things  told  on  his  nerves. 
He  went  away,  and  later  in  his  Menschliches 
Allzumenschliches  appeared  the  first  faint  thread 
124 


NIETZSCHE    THE    RHAPSODIST 

that,  in  Der  Fall  Wagner,  had  become  a  scar- 
let skein  of  abuse.  He  depreciated  genius 
as  being  "  a  product  of  atavism,  its  glory 
is  cheap,  its  throne  quickly  reared,  and  bending 
the  knee  to  it  is  a  mere  habit."  Wahnfried, 
quick  to  detect  heresy,  recognized  the  allusion  ; 
and  Wagner,  deeply  pained  at  the  defection  of  a 
real  friend,  forbade  his  name  to  be  mentioned. 
And  Wagner  was,  as  Nietzsche  declared,  the 
grande  passion  of  his  life. 

M.  Schure   thus  described   the   personal    ap- 
pearances of  Nietzsche :  — 

No  one  who  conversed  with  him  could  fail  to  be 
struck  by  the  powers  of  his  mind,  and  the  singularity 
of  his  looks.  His  closely  cropped  hair  and  heavy 
mustache  gave  him  at  first  sight  the  air  of  a  cavalry 
officer.  There  was  combination  of  hauteur  and  timid- 
ity in  his  bearing.  His  voice,  musical  and  deliberate, 
betrayed  the  artistic  temperament ;  his  meditative 
almost  hesitating  gait,  the  philosopher.  Nothing 
was  more  deceptive  than  the  apparent  calm  of  his 
expression.  He  had  the  fixed  eye  of  the  thinker, 
but  at  the  same  time  it  was  the  eye  of  the  searching 
and  keen  observer  and  the  fanatical  visionary.  This 
dual  character  of  the  eye  was  almost  uncanny,  and 
had  a  disquieting  effect  on  those  who  talked  with 
him  face  to  face.  His  expression  in  moments  of 
enthusiasm  could  be  one  of  dreamy  sweetness,  but 
almost  instantly  relapsed  again  into  fierce  hostility. .  .  . 
There  was  a  distant,  isolated  atmosphere  about  the 
whole  Nietzsche  personality,  a  veiled  disdain  which 
is  often  characteristic  of  the  aristocrat  of  thought. 
125 


OVERTONES 

In  a  brief  tribute  to  the  memory  of  Fried- 
rich  Nietzsche,  "  So  solltet  ihr  Nietzsche  ver- 
stehen,"  4n  the  Bcilage  zur  Allgcmcinen  Zeitung, 
Frau  Professor  Wanda  Bartels  tells  of  her  and  her 
husband's  chance  acquaintance  with  the  famous 
thinker  during  a  sojourn  in  Venice.  She  dwells 
upon  the  contrast  of  his  own  modest  reserve  and 
unassuming  ways  with  those  of  the  blustering 
youths  who  flaunt  in  public  as  his  followers  and 
believers  in  his  "  system  "  ;  for  he  had  no  system, 
and  "  did  not  write  to  teach  the  immature,  but 
to  free  his  own  soul."  Frau  Bartels's  protest 
calls  to  mind  the  more  weighty  and  truly  en- 
lightening utterances  of  another  personal  friend 
of  Nietzsche,  Professor  Paul  Deussen,  of  Kiel, 
who,  writing  in  the  Wiener  Ruudschau  on  the 
Truth  about  Friedrich  Nietzsche,  discusses  with 
great  clearness  the  two  cardinal  points  of  Nietz- 
sche's doctrine,  viz.  the  Ubermensch  and  the 
ewige  Wiederkehr,  or  eternal  repetition  of  the 
world  process.  The  former,  Professor  Deussen 
holds,  is  an  ideal  of  humanity  which,  in  essential 
points,  coincides  with  the  Christ  of  the  church ; 
and  when  Nietzsche  insists  that  the  man  within 
us  must  be  overcome  in  order  that  the  Uber- 
mensch may  arise,  he  preaches  what  all  great 
moralists  and  religious  teachers  have  preached. 
Nietzsche  errs  in  his  conception  of  the  nature 
of  the  "negation  of  the  will,"  and  in  substituting 
genius  for  morality  (or  the  intellect  for  the  will) 
as  the  means  of  attaining  to  an  ideal  humanity. 
126 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

After  many  years  of  guessing  in  the  dark  as 
to  Nietzsche's  madness,  Dr.  George  M.  Gould 
points  out  in  a  careful  and  convincing  essay  that 
the  original  trouble  began  with  his  eyes,  with  a 
faulty  diagnosis  of  his  complaint.  Dr.  Gould 
writes,  after  sifting  all  the  evidence  of  Nietzsche's 
day-books  and  his  sister's  suspicions  as  to  the  real 
cause,  in  the  Montreal  Medical  Journal :  — 

I  have  spoken  of  the  physiologic  cause  of  this 
morbidly  feverish  intensity  of  mental  activity.  It 
appears  to  me  the  inevitable  irritation  due  to  se- 
vere eye-strain.  Nietzsche  also  thought  of  suicide. 
Nietzsche  produced  within  twenty  years  sixteen  vol- 
umes, all  written  by  himself  in  small,  clear  hand- 
writing, all  the  result  of  independent  philosophic 
and  original  thinking,  besides  several  other  volumes 
of  technical  philologic  studies.  He  was,  moreover, 
a  busy,  conscientious  teacher  and  lecturer. 

The  influence  of  his  disease  upon  his  character 
and  writings  is  everywhere  painfully  manifest. 
Nietzsche  was  seized  with  an  enthusiasm  for  Scho- 
penhauer and  his  works  at  the  age  of  twenty-one. 
With  greater  intensity  his  devotion  to  Wagner  and 
his  music,  I  gather,  was  turned  to  morbid  dislike  by 
the  influence  of  diseased  cerebral  activity.  Deussen, 
I  feel,  is  in  error  when  he  writes  that  "  A  deeper 
cause  lay  at  the  root  of  Nietzsche's  resignation  of  his 
professorship  in  1879  than  his  'combined  diseases 
of  the  nerves  of  his  eyes,  brain,  and  stomach.'  The 
philologic  profession  of  teachers,  like  a  coat,  became 
too  small  for  him,  etc.     His  internal  unrest,  etc." 

But  if  so,  it  is  an  error  which  only  extends  the 
127 


OVERTONES 

pathologic  to  the  deeper  activities  of  his  mind. 
How  far  his  cerebral  irritation  was  responsible  for 
his  "  aristocratic  anarchy,"  his  occasional  lapses  into 
egoistic  disdain,  etc.,  would  be  impossible  to  gauge. 
It  surely  was  not  wholly  inoperative.  Stringency, 
hardness,  radicalism,  it  certainly  helped  to  produce. 
Mobius  thinks  the  Zarathustra  would  not  have  been 
written  without  the  morbid  cerebral  irritation.  It 
appears  almost  certain  that  the  aphoristic  form  of 
much  of  his  later  writing  is  explained  as  the  result 
of  the  manner  in  which  he  was  forced  to  do  his  lit- 
erary work,  i.e.  by  thinking  and  note-making  while 
walking.  The  serious  reflexes  to  eyes,  head,  and 
digestive  system,  which  were  induced  by  writing, 
compelled  him  to  collate  these  notes  with  the  least 
overworking  possible.  Hence  also  result  the  grow- 
ing contradictions  and  illogicalities,  the  discreteness 
and  want  of  transitional,  connecting,  and  modifying 
sentences. 

In  one  of  the  last  days  of  December,  1888,  or  in 
the  first  days  of  January  (dates  not  definite),  Nietz- 
sche fell,  near  his  lodgings  in  Turin,  and  could  not 
rise  again.  A  servant  found  him  and  led  him  home 
with  much  difficulty.  For  two  days  he  lay  silent 
and  still  on  his  sofa,  when  abnormal  cerebral  activ- 
ity and  confusion  were  evident.  He  spoke  much  in 
monologue,  sang  and  played  the  piano  loud  and 
long,  lost  the  sense  of  money  value,  and  wrote  fan- 
tastically to  and  about  his  friends,  etc.  Overbeck 
hurried  to  him  and  brought  him  to  Basle,  to  the  san- 
atorium of  Professor  Binswanger,  the  alienist,  where 
the  diagnosis,  according  to  Deussen,  of  progressive, 
later  corrected  to  that  of  atypical,  paralysis,  was 
128 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

made.  His  mother  had  him  brought  to  Naumburg, 
cared  for  him  until  her  death  in  1897,  after  which 
his  sister  moved  with  him  to  Weimar.  He  died 
August  25,  1900. 

According  to  Dr.  Reicholdt  the  immediate  cause 
of  his  death  was  pneumonia,  with  edema  of  the 
lungs.  There  was  no  autopsy  ;  an  examination  of 
the  brain  would  have  revealed  many  secrets. 

Is  it  not  an  unusual  coincidence  that  Bay- 
reuth,  the  very  hub  of  Wagner's  musical  and 
of  Nietzsche's  intellectual  activities,  is  also  the 
birthplace  of  a  man  who  is  one  of  Nietzsche's 
forerunners,  one  is  tempted  to  say,  his  real  phil- 
osophical progenitor?  In  the  thriving  Bavarian 
village  was  born,  October  25,  1806,  Caspar 
Schmidt,  later  known  to  the  world  as  Max 
Stirner,  the  author  of  The  Individual  and  his 
Property  (Der  Einzige  und  sein  Eigenthum, 
Leipsic,  1845),  the  very  gospel  of  modern  phil- 
osophical anarchy,  and  a  book  which,  with 
Guyau's  system  of  morals,  paved  the  way 
for  Nietzsche.  Stirner,  poor,  unknown,  died  in 
Berlin,  June  26,  1856.  There  is  a  sympathetic 
study  of  his  life  by  John  Henry  Mackay,  the 
German  poet  with  Scotch  blood  in  his  veins. 

The  best  single  study  in  the  English  language 
on  Nietzsche  is  by  Havelock  Ellis.  This  writer 
hazards  the  just  observation  that  there  was  a 
touch  of  the  "prig"  in  the  philosopher,  and 
that  Wagner's  free  and  easy  manners  often 
made  him  wince.     "  Your  brother  with  his  air 

K  129 


OVERTONES 

of  delicate  distinction  is  a  most  uncomfortable 
fellow,"  Wagner  said  to  Frau  Forster-Nietzsche, 
"  one  can  always  see  what  he  is  thinking  ;  some- 
times he  is  quite  embarrassed  at  my  jokes  — 
and  then  I  crack  them  more  madly  than  ever." 
And  the  motley  crowd  that  was  attracted  to 
Bayreuth  filled  the  exclusive  Nietzsche  with 
horror.  An  aristocrat,  a  promulgator  of  an 
aristocratic  philosophy,  writers  on  social  science 
very  properly  refuse  to  class  this  thinker 
among  the  leaders  of  the  anarchistic  movement 
—  Nietzsche  loathed  the  promiscuous,  the  pop- 
ular, in  a  word,  the  mob.  Wagner  was  Teutonic 
(his  friend  doubted  his  Teutonism  in  a  memorable 
passage) ;  he  was  no  longer  Hellenic.  And  he 
seemed  to  be  going  Romeward.  It  was  all  too 
much  for  the  idealist  who  broke  away  from  his 
past ;  in  reality,  the  attempt  was  made  to  break 
with  himself.  Impending  madness  was  preceded 
by  distressing  melancholia. 

He  loved  Wagner  to  the  last,  and  previous  to 
the  tragic  crisis,  Lou  Salome  says  that  he  went 
to  Lucerne,  and  in  Triebschen  sat  and  wept  at 
his  ineluctable  fate.  He  even  wrote  after  The 
Wagner  Case  such  a  sentiment  as  this :  — 

"  Here,  while  I  am  speaking  of  the  recrea- 
tions of  my  life,  I  lack  the  word  to  express  my 
gratitude  for  that  which  formed  my  deepest  and 
my  heartiest  solace.  This  beyond  all  doubt  was 
the  intimate  communion  with  Richard  Wagner. 
I  would  give  little  for  the  rest  of  my  human  rela- 
130 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

tions  ;  at  no  price  would  I  cut  out  of  my  life  the 
days  of  Triebschen,  days  of  trust,  of  cheerful- 
ness, of  sublime  inspirations,  of  deep  moments. 
I  know  not  what  others  have  gone  through  with 
Wagner ;  our  heaven  was  never  traversed  by  a 
cloud." 

Was  Wagner  to  blame  ?  Wagner,  harassed 
by  a  thousand  importunings — his  gigantic  Bay- 
reuth  scheme,  his  money  troubles,  his  uncertain 
position  despite  his  first  big  success !  Ellis  be- 
lieves, rightly  enough,  that  when  Wagner  real- 
ized Nietzsche  was  no  longer  his  friend,  "  he 
dropped  him  silently,  as  a  workman  drops  a 
useless  tool."  This  seems  cruelly  selfish ;  but 
Wagner  had  no  time  for  unselfish  moods,  for 
fine-spun  theories  of  friendship.  He  was  a 
realist.  Life  had  made  him  one ;  besides,  was 
there  not  Ludwig  of  Bavaria  to  take  the  place 
of  the  once  gentle  dreamer,  now  doubter  and 
scorner  ?  And  Wagner  was  old  enough  to 
recognize  the  value  of  money.  No,  the  great 
composer  is  not  to  be  alone  censured.  Yet  must 
we  exclaim,  Alas  !  poor  Nietzsche ! 

II 

What  does  Nietzsche  preach  ?  What  is  his 
central  doctrine  divested  of  its  increments  of 
anti-Semitism,  anti-Wagnerism,  anti-Christianity, 
and  anti-everything  else  ?  Simply,  a  doctrine 
as  old  as  the  first  invertebrate  organism  which 
131 


OVERTONES 

floated  in  torrid  seas  beneath  a  blazing  moon  : 
Egoism,  individualism,  personal  freedom,  self- 
hood. He  is  the  apostle  of  the  ego,  and  he 
refuses  to  accept  the  system  spinning  of  the 
Teutonic  spider  philosophers  of  the  day.  He 
is  a  proclaimer  of  the  rank  animalism  of  man. 
He  believes  in  the  body  and  not  in  the  soul  of 
theology. 

From  Heraclitus  to  Hobbes  materialism  has 
flowed,  a  sturdy  current,  parallel  with  hundreds 
of  more  spiritual  creeds.  I  say  "  more  spiritual 
creeds,"  for  the  spiritualizing  of  what  was  once 
contemptuously  called  dead,  inorganic  matter  is 
being  steadily  prosecuted  by  every  man  of  science 
to-day,  whether  be  be  electrician,  biologist,  or 
chemist.  Nietzsche's  voice  is  raised  against  the 
mystagogues,  occultists,  and  reactionaries  who, 
in  the  name  of  religion  and  art,  would  put  sci- 
ence once  more  under  the  ban  of  a  century  ago. 
He  is  the  strong  pagan  man  who  hates  the  weak 
and  ailing.  He  therefore  hates  the  religion  of 
the  weak  and  oppressed.  He  is  an  aristocrat 
in  art,  believing  that  there  should  be  an  art  for 
artists,  and  an  art  —  an  inferior  art  —  for  infe- 
rior intelligences.  He  forgot  that  there  is  an  art 
for  the  artist,  —  his  own  particular  art,  and  that 
into  it  none  but  the  equally  gifted  may  have  an 
entrance.  And  he  forgot,  too,  that  all  great  art 
is  rooted  in  the  soil  of  earth. 

Nietzsche  hates  the  music  that  is  beloved  of 
the  world.     Yet,  after  the  twentieth  hearing  of 
132 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

Carmen,  he  frantically  asserts  that  Bizet  is  a 
greater  man  than  Wagner,  that  he  is  blither,  pos- 
sesses the  divine  gayety,  sparkle,  and  indescrib- 
able fascination  of  the  Greeks  !  From  his  letters 
we  learn  that  as  a  joke  he  put  up  Bizet  as  a  man 
of  straw  to  fight  the  Wagner  idol.  And  a  joke 
it  is.  But  what  would  he  have  said  to  the  music 
of  Richard  Strauss  ? 

He  rejects  with  contempt  pity,  —  that  pity 
which  is  akin  to  love ;  and  therefore  he  hates 
Wagner,  for  in  Wagner's  music  is  the  note  of 
yearning  love  and  pity  sounded  by  a  master 
hand.     To  Nietzsche  George  Eliot's 

Oh  may  I  join  the  choir  invisible 

Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 

In  minds  made  better  by  their  jjresence  :  live 

In  pulses  stirred  to  generosity, 

...  in  scorn 
For  miserable  aims  that  end  with  self 

would  have  been  as  silly  as  was  the  optimism  of 
Leibnitz  to  Schopenhauer.  This  Nietzsche  was 
a  terrible  fellow,  a  very  Berserker  in  his  mad 
rage  against  existing  institutions.  He  used  a 
battering  ram  of  rare  dialectic  skill,  and  crash 
go  the  religious,  social,  and  artistic  fabrics  reared 
ages  since  !  But  when  the  brilliant  smoke  of  his 
style  clears  away,  we  still  see  standing  the  same 
venerable  institutions.  This  tornadic  philoso- 
pher does  damage  only  to  the  outlying  struc- 
tures. He  lets  in  light  on  some  dark  and  dank 
places.  He  is  a  tonic  for  malaria,  musical  and 
133 


OVERTONES 

religious ;  and  there  is  value  even  in  his  own 
fantastic  Transvaluation  of  all  Values.  I  fancy 
that  if  Friedrich  Nietzsche  had  been  a  man  of 
physical  resources,  he  would  have  been  a  soldier 
hero.  The  late  Anton  Seidl  once  told  me  that  he 
knew  the  unlucky  man  when  he  was  a  Wagnerian. 
He  was  slight  of  stature,  evidently  of  delicate 
health,  but  in  his  eyes  burned  the  restless  fire  of 
genius.  If  that  same  energy  could  have  been 
transmuted  into  action,  he  might  have  been  a  sane, 
healthy  man  to-day.  In  all  this  he  was  not  un- 
like Stendhal,  of  whom  Jules  Lemaitre  wrote  :  — 
"  A  grand  man  of  action,  paralyzed  little  by 
little  by  his  incomparable  analysis."  Nietzsche 
burned  his  brain  away  by  a  too  strenuous  analy- 
sis of  life. 

I  can  recommend  to  all  Wagnerites  Nietzsche's 
Der  Fall  Wagner.  It  is  bound  to  take  the  edge 
off  their  uncritical  worship.  But  read  it  after  the 
first  study,  Richard  Wagner  in  Bayreuth.  It 
will  also  demonstrate  that  Wagner  is  great,  and 
Wagnerism  dangerous.  Nietzsche  saw  with 
clear  eyes  the  peril  that  threatens  music  be- 
cause of  the  Wagnerian  principles.  We  must 
never  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  with  Wagner 
the  drama  almost  always  takes  precedence.  His 
deviation  from  his  own  theory  was  his  artistic 
salvation.  But  there  lies  the  danger  in  him  for 
young  composers.  He  is  a  man  of  the  theatre. 
His  music,  divested  of  all  the  metaphysical  ver- 
biage heaped  upon  it  by  Wagner  and  Wag- 
134 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

nerian  critics,  is  music  of  the  footlights.  A  great 
formalist  he  is ;  but  it  is  Wagner's  form,  not  the 
form  for  orchestral  writers.  It  is  all  well  enough 
to  say  that  the  symphony  has  had  its  day ;  but 
its  structure,  despite  numberless  modifications, 
will  survive  as  long  as  absolute  music  itself.  And 
music  pure  and  simple,  for  itself,  undefiled  by 
costumes,  scenery,  limelights,  and  vocal  virtuosi, 
is  the  noblest  music  of  all. 

Nietzsche  writes  of  Germany  as  "  being  arbi- 
trarily stupefied  by  itself  for  nearly  a  thousand 
years." 

"  Nowhere  have  the  two  great  European 
narcotics,  alcohol  and  Christianity,  been  more 
wickedly  misused.  Recently  a  third  has  been 
introduced,  with  which  alone  every  refined  and 
bold  activity  of  intellect  can  be  wiped  out  — 
music,  our  sluggish,  ever  more  sluggish,  German 
music.  How  much  moody  heaviness,  lameness, 
humidity,  and  dressing-gown  mood,  how  much 
beer  is  in  German  intelligence  !  "  You  may 
readily  understand  that  this  Nietzsche  is  a 
Slav.  He  is  agile  of  temperament,  his  mind  is 
a  supple  one ;  he  loves  the  keen  rapier  thrusts, 
the  glancing  thrust  of  the  Celt.  He  hates  Ger- 
many. Was  he  a  German  ?  He  is  wholly  Slavic 
at  times,  and  yet  what  a  contradictory  man  and 
how  narve  his  egotism !  More  feminine  alto- 
gether than  masculine  was  this  febrile,  capri- 
cious mind,  and  a  hater  of  the  Teuton,  a  race 
that  is  at  once  both  fat  and  nervous. 
135 


OVERTONES 

Nietzsche  is  par  excellence  the  thinker  for  the 
artistic.  If  Wagner  was  a  painter,  or  a  sym- 
phonist  manque,  then  Nietzsche  was  an  artist 
manque'.  His  prose,  swift,  weighty,  concentrated 
and  brilliant,  attracts  readers  who  dislike  his 
doctrines.  One  must  read  what  he  says  in  his 
Roving  Expeditions  of  an  Inopportune  Phi- 
losopher. 

"  Seneca,  or  the  toreador  of  virtue." 

"  Rousseau,  or  return  to  nature  in  impuris 
natiiralibus ." 

"  Schiller,  or  the  moral  Trumpeter  of  Sackin- 
gen." 

"  Dante,  or  the  hyena  poetising  in  tombs." 

"  Kant,  or  cant,  as  an  intelligent  character." 

"  Victor  Hugo,  or  Pharos,  in  a  sea  of  absurd- 
ity." 

"  Michelet,  or  enthusiasm  which  strips  off  the 
coat." 

"  Carlyle,  or  pessimism  as  an  undigested 
dinner." 

"John  Stuart  Mill,  or  offensive  transpar- 
ency." 

"  The  Goncourts,  or  the  two  Ajaxes  struggling 
with  Homer  ;  music  by  Offenbach." 

Nietzsche  preached  of  the  beauty  and  pride 
of  the  body.  Of  pride  we  cannot  have  too 
much.  It  is  the  salt  of  personality.  Golden- 
mouthed  Plato,  in  De  Republica,  makes  outcry 
against  the  dullard  who  thinks  shame  of  his 
body.  The  human  body  is  truly  a  tabernacle, 
136 


NIETZSCHE    THE    RHAPSODIST 

and  woe  to  him  that  defileth  it,  says  the  wise 
man. 

He  once  made  a  proposal  to  found  a  monas- 
tery for  freethinkers.  What  an  abbot  he  would 
have  been  ! 

Did  Nietzsche  not  declare,  in  the  words  of  the 
Apostle  Matthew  (xvi.  26),  slightly  altered:  — 

"  For  what  is  a  man  profited  if  he  shall  gain 
his  own  soul  and  lose  the  whole  world  ? " 

Consider  his  great  opponent,  Tolstoy,  who 
preaches  the  doctrine  of  non-resistance,  of  altru- 
ism, of  a  depressing  socialism  which  is  saturated 
with  the  very  Orientalism  so  despised  by  Nietz- 
sche !  But  then,  Tolstoy  does  not  play  fair  in  the 
game.  He  has  reached  the  threescore  and  ten  of 
Scriptures ;  he  has  led,  by  his  own  acknowledg- 
ment, a  life  of  self-indulgence ;  he  has  gambled 
and  drank  deeply.  His  belly  was  his  god.  Then 
he  ran  the  intellectual  gamut  of  dissipation.  He 
worshipped  at  the  shrines  of  false  gods,  wrote 
great,  gray,  godless  novels,  won  renown,  family 
happiness,  riches,  love,  admiration,  applause,  and 
notoriety.  So,  having  lived  too  happily,  he  forth- 
with falls  to  railing  at  destiny,  like  the  English- 
man Mr.  Krehbiel  tells  us  of  in  his  Music  and 
Manners.  Quoting  Haydn  he  writes,  "Mr. 
Brassey  once  cursed  because  he  enjoyed  too 
much  happiness  in  this  world."  Tolstoy,  having 
tasted  of  everything,  has  damaged  his  palate. 
Man  pleases  him  not,  nor  does  woman.  In  every 
book  of  his  later,  lonesome  years  he  gives  away 
137 


OVERTONES 

the  secret  of  life's  illusion,  like  the  mischievous 
rival  of  a  conjuror.  It  is  not  fair  to  the  young 
ones  who,  with  mouth  agape,  gaze  at  the  cun- 
ning pictures  limned  by  that  old  arch-hypocrite, 
Nature.  The  young  man  who  has  not  had  the 
courage  to  make  a  fool  of  himself  some  time  in 
his  career  has  not  lived.  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son said  this,  and  he  said  it  better.  Away  with 
your  cynics !  Throw  pessimism  to  the  dogs ! 
Let  Tolstoy  swear  that  the  inverted  bowl  of  the 
firmament  is  full  of  ashes,  full  of  burnt-out  stars ; 
youth  will  see  the  bravery  of  the  cosmical  circus, 
its  streamers,  its  mad  coursing  through  eternity. 
The  only  way  to  help  others  is  to  help  yourself ! 

So,  despite  his  age,  which  is  democratic,  the 
aristocrat  Nietzsche  caught  its  ears  ;  in  the  teeth 
of  a  religious  reaction  he  preached  rank  atheism  ; 
and  he  opposed  to  altruism  a  selfless  egotism. 
In  a  word,  all  his  tendencies  were  set  against 
those  of  his  time ;  yet  he  has  succeeded  in  at- 
tracting the  attention  of  his  contemporaries. 
Brandes  is  right  in  declaring  that  in  some  secret 
way  Nietzsche  "  must  have  agreed  with  much  of 
the  tumult  of  modern  thought." 

In  his  Gay  Science,  —  a  mockingly  ironic  title 
for  such  a  sad  book,  —  Nietzsche  wrote  these  sen- 
tences ;  as  in  a  meteoric  flare  we  realize  the 
sickness  of  his  prophetic  soul.  He  alludes  to 
his  idea  of  Eternal  Recurrence  :  — 

How  were  it  if,  some  day  or  night,  a  demon  stole 
after  thee  into  thy  most  solitary  solitude,  and  said  to 

133 


NIETZSCHE   THE   RHAPSODIST 

thee  :  "  This  life,  as  thou  livest  it  now,  and  hast  lived 
it,  thou  shalt  have  to  live  over  again,  and  not  once  but 
innumerable  times  ;  and  there  will  be  nothing  new  in 
it,  but  every  pain  and  every  pleasure,  and  every  thought 
and  sigh,  and  everything  in  thy  life,  the  great  and  the 
unspeakably  petty  alike,  must  come  again  to  thee,  and 
all  in  the  same  series  and  succession  ;  this  spider,  too, 
and  this  moonlight  betwixt  the  trees,  and  this  moment 
likewise  and  I  myself.  The  eternal  sand-glass  of  time 
is  always  turned  again,  and  thou  with  it,  thou  atom  of 
dust."  Wouldest  thou  not  cast  thyself  down,  and  with 
gnashing  of  teeth  curse  the  demon  who  thus  spoke  ? 
Or  hast  thou  ever  experienced  the  tremendous  moment 
in  which  thou  wouldest  answer  him,  "  Thou  art  a  god, 
and  never  heard  I  anything  more  divine  "  ? 

Frau  Andreas-Salome,  whose  book  on  the 
philosopher  is  interesting,  though  disclaimed  by 
Frau  Forster-Nietzsche,  adds  this  illuminating 
commentary  on  Nietzsche's  Eternal  Recurrence 
doctrine :  — 

He  struggled  with  it  at  first  as  with  a  fate  from 
which  there  was  no  escape.  Never  can  I  forget  the 
hours  in  which  he  first  confided  it  to  me  as  a  secret, 
as  something  of  whose  verification  and  confirmation 
he  had  an  unspeakable  horror ;  he  spoke  of  it  only  in 
a  low  voice  and  with  every  sign  of  the  profoundest 
horror.  And  he  suffered  in  truth  so  deeply  in  life  that 
the  certainty  of  life's  eternal  recurrence  could  not  but 
be  for  him  a  thing  to  shudder  at.  The  quintessence 
of  the  doctrine  of  recurrence,  the  radiant  apotheosis 
of  life  which  Nietzsche  afterwards  taught,  forms  so  pro- 

139 


OVERTONES 

found  a  contrast  to  his  own  painful  experiences  of  life 
that  it  impresses  us  as  an  uncanny  mask. 

And  she  further  remarks :  "  Nietzsche  contem- 
plated the  possibility  that  the  theory  might  be 
scientifically  deduced  by  physics  from  the  doc- 
trine of  atoms."  And  here  we  are  almost  back 
to  the  orthodox  belief  in  eternity.  All  thought 
moves  circle-wise,  and  Nietzsche's  ethical  teach- 
ing is  as  old  as  Caliicles  in  the  Gorgias. 

Nietzsche,  then,  is  not  such  a  revolutionary 
thinker.  He  is  the  perfect  type  of  the  old  Greek 
rhapsodist,  the  impassioned  rhetor,  who  with 
sonorous,  beautiful  phrases  charmed  and  soothed 
his  listeners  as  he  pursued  his  peripatetic  way. 
Sometimes  the  sound  of  what  he  says  remains 
long  after  the  memory  of  its  sense  has  van- 
ished. However,  a  perfect  art  or  philosophy,  or 
a  perfect  world  itself,  might  soon  grow  monoto- 
nous. The  ameliorating,  if  slightly  hedonistic, 
philosophy  of  the  Cardinal  in  John  Inglesant 
comes  back  in  pleasing  sequence:  — 

There  is  no  solution  ;  believe  me,  no  solution  of 
life's  enigma  worth  the  reading.  .  .  .  What  solution 
can  you  hope  to  find,  brooding  on  your  own  heart,  on 
this  narrow  plot  of  grass  shut  in  by  lofty  walls?  You, 
and  natures  like  yours,  make  this  great  error ;  you  are 
moralizing  and  speculating  upon  what  life  ought  to  be, 
and  in  the  meantime  it  slips  by  you,  and  you  are  noth- 
ing, and  life  is  gone.  I  have  heard,  you  doubtless,  in 
a  fine  concert  of  viols  extemporary  descant  upon  a 
140 


NIETZSCHE   THE    RHAPSODIST 

thorough-bass  in  the  Italian  manner,  when  each  per- 
former in  turn  plays  such  a  variety  of  descant,  in  con- 
cordance to  the  bass,  as  his  skill  and  the  present 
invention  may  suggest  to  him.  In  this  manner  of  play 
the  consonances  invariably  fall  true  upon  a  given  note, 
and  every  succeeding  note  of  the  ground  is  met,  now 
in  the  unison  or  octave,  now  in  the  concords,  preserv- 
ing the  melody  throughout  by  the  laws  of  motion  and 
sound.     I  have  thought  that  this  is  life. 

To  a  solemn  bass  of  mystery  and  of  the  unseen 
each  man  plays  his  own  descant,  as  his  taste  or  fate 
suggests ;  but  this  manner  of  play  is  so  governed  and 
controlled  by  what  seems  a  fatal  necessity  that  all 
melts  into  a  species  of  harmony  ;  and  even  the  very 
discords  and  dissonances,  the  wild  passions  and  deeds 
of  men,  are  so  attempered  and  adjusted  that  without 
them  the  entire  piece  would  be  incomplete.  In  this 
way  I  look  upon  life  as  a  spectacle. 


141 


IV 


LITERARY  MEN    WHO  LOVED 
MUSIC 

THE  MUSICAL  TASTE  OF  TURGENIEFF 


Mr.  Henry  James,  who  is  exquisitely  aware 
of  the  presence  of  others,  has  written  of  Ivan 
Turgenieff  with  astonishing  candor.  In  his  Par- 
tial Portraits  a  picture  of  the  great,  gentle  Rus- 
sian writer  is  slowly  built  up  by  strokes  like 
smoke.  There  is  much  of  his  troubled  melan- 
choly, some  of  his  humor,  and,  rare  for  Mr. 
James,  distinct  allusions  to  Turgenieff's  attitude 
in  the  presence  of  the  American-born  novelist's 
work.  Turgenieff  cared  little  for  criticism.  It 
pleased  him  to  know  that  his  friends  loved  him 
and  read  his  books.  He  did  not  read  theirs ; 
Mr.  James  admits  he  did  not  pretend  to  read  his, 
though  the  older  man  confessed  to  having  found 
one  of  the  novels  written  de  main  de  viaitre. 
His  heedlessness  about  himself  and  his  affairs 
is  proverbial.  He  was  robbed  of  130,000  francs, 
"  a  fairly  large  slice  of  his  fortune,"  he  writes 
142 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

Flaubert,  but  has  blame  for  himself,  not  for  the 
dishonest  steward  of  his  estates.  Like  Flaubert, 
he  was  rich,  very  rich  for  a  literary  man,  and 
like  the  author  of  Bouvard  et  Pecuchet,  he  was 
continually  giving,  eternally  giving,  said  his 
Paris  friends,  indignant  at  the  spectacle  of  both 
men  denuding  themselves  of  more  than  their 
surplus  income. 

There  is  no  one  alive  who  could  give  us  such 
intimate  souvenirs  of  Turgenieff  as  Madame 
Viardot-Garcia.  He  was  the  family  friend,  the 
closest  companion,  of  her  husband ;  it  was  an 
undisturbed  intimacy  for  many  years.  His 
letters,  the  most  eloquent,  were  written  to  Ma- 
dame Viardot-Garcia,  and  to  both  he  opened  his 
mind  about  music.  He  knew  Gounod,  who 
often  visited  him  and  rolled  about  on  his  bear- 
skin rug  when  he  was  in  the  travail  of  composi- 
tion. It  was  at  Courtavenel,  the  country  place 
of  the  Viardots,  that  Gounod  met  Turgenieff. 
Their  liking  was  mutual. 

Turgenieff  knew  the  piano  slightly,  for  he 
writes  of  his  having  played  duos  of  Beethoven 
and  Mozart  with  a  sister  of  Tolstoy.  He  counsels, 
in  a  letter  from  Spasskoi'e,  Madame  Viardot  to 
work  at  her  composition.  This  gifted  woman, 
singer,  and  pianist,  admired  by  Liszt,  Heine,  and 
half  of  Europe,  occasionally  found  time  to  com- 
pose. "  And  now  set  to  work  ! "  cries  Tur- 
genieff. "  I  have  never  admired  and  preached 
work  so  much  as  I  have  since  I  have  been  do- 
143 


OVERTONES 

ing  nothing  myself ;  and  yet  look  here,  I  give 
you  my  word  of  honor,  that,  if  you  will  begin  to 
write  sonatas,  I  will  take  up  my  literary  work 
again.  '  Hand  me  the  cinnamon  and  I'll  hand 
you  the  senna.'  A  novel  for  a  sonata  —  does 
that  suit  you  ?  " 

In  an  earlier  letter  he  speaks  of  Russia  "  with 
its  vast  and  sombre  countenance,  motionless  and 
veiled  like  the  sphinx  of  CEdipus.  She  will 
swallow  me  up  later  on.  I  seem  to  see  her 
large,  inert  gaze  fixed  upon  me,  with  its  dreary 
scrutiny  appropriate  to  eyes  of  stone.  Never 
mind,  sphinx,  I  shall  return  to  thee  ;  and  thou 
mayest  devour  me  at  thine  ease,  if  I  do  not 
guess  thy  riddle  !  Meanwhile,  leave  me  in  peace 
a  little  longer;  I  shall  return  to  thy  steppes." 
All  his  life  passionately  preoccupied  with  Russia, 
Turgenieff  had  the  bitter  misfortune  of  being 
discredited  by  his  countrymen.  Never  a  bard 
and  prophet  like  Tolstoy,  he  nevertheless  loved 
Russia  and  saw  her  weaknesses  with  as  keen  an 
eye  as  the  other  writer.  Accused  of  an  ultra- 
cosmopolitanism,  wofully  misunderstood,  this 
great  man  went  to  his  grave  sorrowing  because 
young  Russia,  the  extreme  left,  refused  him. 
If  he  was  solicitous  in  advancing  the  names  of 
Flaubert,  Daudet,  the  de  Goncourts,  Zola,  and 
de  Maupassant,  his  zeal  for  rising  talent  in  his 
native  land  led  him  to  extremes.  Halperine- 
Kaminsky  and  Mr.  James  say  that  he  had  al- 
ways in  tow  some  wonderful  Russian  genius, 
1 44 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

poet,  painter,  musician,  sculptor,  or  nondescript, 
who  was  about  to  revolutionize  art.  In  a  month 
he  was  hot  on  the  trail  of  a  new  one,  and  his 
pains  were  usually  rewarded  by  ineptitude  or 
ingratitude.  To  paint  him  as  an  indifferent 
patriot,  an  "absentee  "  landlord,  —  his  behavior 
to  his  tenants  was  ridiculously  tender,  —  is  an 
injustice,  as  unjust  as  the  reception  given 
Tschai'kowsky  at  the  beginning  of  his  career  by 
certain  of  his  contemporaries. 

The  friendship  of  Turgenieff  and  Flaubert  was 
a  beautiful  episode  in  the  history  of  two  litera- 
tures. Alphonse  Daudet  spoke  of  it :  "  It  was 
George  Sand  who  married  them.  The  boastful, 
rebellious,  quixotic  Flaubert,  with  a  voice  like  a 
guard's  trumpeter,  with  his  penetrating,  ironical 
outlook,  and  the  gait  of  a  conquering  Norman,  was 
undoubtedly  the  masculine  half  of  this  marriage 
of  souls ;  but  who,  in  that  other  colossal  being, 
with  his  flaxen  brows,  his  great  unmodelled  face, 
would  have  discovered  the  woman,  that  woman 
of  over-accentuated  refinement  whom  Turgenieff 
has  painted  in  his  books,  that  nervous,  languid, 
passionate  Russian,  torpid  as  an  Oriental,  tragic 
as  a  blind  force  in  revolt  ?  So  true  is  it  in  the 
tumult  of  the  great  human  factory,  souls  often 
get  into  the  wrong  covering  —  masculine  souls 
into  feminine  bodies,  feminine  souls  into  Cyclo- 
pean frames." 

These  were  the  days  of  the  "  Dinners  of  the 
Hissed  Authors,"  when  Taine,  Catulle  Mendes, 

L  145 


OVERTONES 

de  Heredia,  Paul  Alexis,  Leon  Hennique, 
Philippe  Burty,  Leon  Cladel,  Huysmans,  Zola, 
Turgenieff,  the  de  Goncourts,  Flaubert,  and  de 
Maupassant  gathered  monthly  and  defined  new 
literary  horizons.  There  was  plenty  of  wit, 
satire,  enthusiasm,  dreams,  and  theorizing. 

Guy  de  Maupassant  relates  that  "  Turgenieff 
used  to  bury  himself  in  an  arm  chair  and 
talk  slowly  in  a  gentle  voice,  rather  weak  and 
hesitating,  yet  giving  to  things  he  said  an 
extraordinary  charm  and  interest.  Flaubert 
would  listen  to  him  with  religious  reverence, 
fixing  his  wide  blue  eyes,  with  their  restless 
pupils,  upon  his  friend's  fine  face,  and  an- 
swering in  his  sonorous  voice,  which  came 
like  a  clarion  blast  from  under  that  veteran 
Gaul's  mustache  of  his.  Their  conversation 
rarely  touched  upon  the  current  affairs  of  life, 
seldom  wandered  away  from  literary  topics  or 
literary  history.  Turgenieff  would  often  come 
laden  with  foreign  books,  and  would  translate 
fluently  poems  by  Goethe,  Poushkin,  or  Swin- 
burne." He  knew  English  ;  he  knew  Italian, 
German,  and  French.  He  was  crazy  over  hunt- 
ing —  read  his  Memoirs  of  a  Sportsman,  minia- 
ture masterpieces  —  and  crossed  the  Channel 
after  good  game  in  England. 

"  Life  seems    to   grow    over    our    heads    like 

grass,"  is  a  phrase  of  his  that  is  pinned  to  my 

memory.     It  was  written  to  Flaubert,  "  the  dear 

old  boy,"  who  might  have  profited  by  the  other's 

146 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED   MUSIC 

advice  to  cast  theory  to  the  winds  and  "  do  " 
something  "  passionate,  torrid,  glowing."  And 
yet  as  Henri  Taine  says,  Madame  Bovary  is  the 
greatest  literary  performance  of  the  century. 
Turgenieff  did  not  always  follow  his  own  preach- 
ing ;  "  my  publisher  keeps  circling  around  me 
like  an  eagle  screaming  for  something,"  he 
writes.  Mr.  James  in  a  delicately  humorous 
page  wonders  when  Turgenieff  found  time  to 
work.  In  Paris  he  was  always  at  dejeuner — 
that  gout  of  his  was  not  acquired  on  wind.  It 
was  in  Russia,  where  he  went  to  bathe  himself, 
as  he  puts  it,  that  he  took  to  long  spells  of 
toil.  Turgenieff  was  most  painstaking  in  the 
matter  of  technical  references.  He  calls  Flau- 
bert's attention  to  an  error  in  L'Education  Sen- 
timentale.  Madame  Arnoux  is  made  to  sing 
very  high  notes,  though  she  is  a  contralto.  This 
was  not  overlooked  by  Turgenieff,  who,  as  a 
friend  of  Madame  Viardot,  naturally  enough 
heard  much  good  singing  in  her  salon.  The 
mistake  is  all  the  more  curious  because  made  by 
Flaubert,  one  of  the  most  conscientious  men  in 
literature.  In  a  burst,  a  most  lovable  one,  the 
Russian  bids  Flaubert,  who  was  either  in  the 
cellar  or  celestial  spaces,  "  Cheer  up  !  After 
all  you  are  Flaubert."  He  writes  from  Lon- 
don, during  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  "  We 
have  hard  times  to  go  through,  we  who  are  born 
onlookers." 

Rich  as  he  was,  but  a  charitable  spendthrift, 
147 


OVERTONES 

Turgenieff  was  not  sorry  to  inherit  from  his 
brother  a  legacy  of  250,000  francs.  It  is  a  no- 
tion of  mine  that  the  richer  a  novelist  the  better 
his  art.  Poverty  does  not  agree  with  certain 
geniuses.  With  composers  who  masquerade  in 
the  theatres  money  is  a  necessity.  Without  it 
their  art  never  blows  to  a  blossoming.  Look 
at  Wagner,  at  Gluck,  for  example,  and  then 
on  the  other  hand  consider  that  wretched,  grimy 
Beethoven  in  mean  Vienna  lodgings,  yelling 
as  he  composed  in  his  deaf  estate,  the  water  he 
spilt  slowly  filtering  through  the  crazy  seams 
of  a  crazy  man's  floor !  He  lived  in  an  ideal 
land,  where  clean  n apery  and  the  pliant  spine 
of  the  time-server  were  but  encumbrances.  Not 
so  the  novel  maker,  the  architect  of  prose  phi- 
losophies like  Schopenhauer's  and  Flaubert's. 
Leisure,  the  leisure  that  feeds  on  a  competence,  is 
a  necessity  for  these  latter.  Schopenhauer  knew 
it,  and,  practical  man,  urged  all  philosophers  to 
cultivate  the  wherewithal  for  leisure — money; 
and  Goethe  in  the  last  book  of  Wilhelm  Meister 
sets  forth  most  admirably  his  idea  of  an  artist's 
abode.  Dickens  and  Thackeray,  a  great  genius, 
a  great  artist,  were  forced  to  drive  their  pens  for 
bread  and  cheese.  Both  fell  short  of  the  per- 
fection achieved  by  Flaubert,  Turgenieff,  and 
Tolstoy,  all  three  very  wealthy  men  and  tardy 
producers.  The  rule  holds  good  for  Balzac. 
The  haste  that  kills  all  art  was  not  thrust  upon 
the  other  three  by  hunger,  and  we  are  the  richer. 
148 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

Your  lyric  poet,  your  symphonist,  fattens  spiritu- 
ally on  a  lean  life,  but  their  brethren  should  have 
a  bank  account. 

Turgenieff  did  not  care  much  for  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt :  — 

I  could  not  know  that  my  opinion  on  Sarah 
Bernhardt  would  become  public  property,  and  I 
am  very  sorry  for  it.  But  I  am  not  in  the  habit 
of  withdrawing  my  opinions,  even  when  I  have 
expressed  them  in  a  private  and  friendly  conversa- 
tion,   and    they   are   made    public    against    my  will. 

Yes,  I  consider  M.  A 's  criticism  of  her  quite 

true  and  just.  This  woman  is  clever  and  skilful; 
she  has  her  business  at  her  fingers'  ends,  is  gifted 
with  a  charming  voice  and  educated  in  a  good 
school  ;  but  she  has  nothing  natural  about  her,  no 
artistic  temperament  whatever,  and  she  tries  to  make 
up  for  this  by  Parisian  license.  She  is  eaten 
through  and  through  with  chic,  reclame,  and  pose. 
She  is  monotonous,  cold,  and  dry  ;  in  short,  without 
a  single  spark  of  talent  in  the  highest  sense  of  the 
word.  Her  gait  is  that  of  a  hen  ;  she  has  no  play  of 
features  ;  the  movements  of  her  hands  are  purposely 
angular  in  order  to  be  piquant ;  the  whole  thing 
reeks   of  the  boulevards,  of   Figaro,  and  patchouli. 

You  see  that,  to  my  mind,  M.  A has  been  even 

too  lenient.  You  quote  Zola  as  an  authority,  al- 
though you  always  rebel  against  all  authorities,  so 
you  must  allow  me  to  quote  Augier,  who  once  said 
to  me:  "  Cette  femme  n'a  aucun  talent;  on  dit 
d'elle  que  e'est  un  paquet  de  nerfs  —  e'est  un  paquet 
de  ficelles."  But,  you  will  ask,  Why  then  such  a 
149 


OVERTONES 

world-wide  reputation  ?  What  do  I  care  ?  I  only 
speak  my  own  feelings,  and  I  am  glad  to  find  some- 
body who  supports  my  view. 

But  these  ficelles  are  artistic  to-day.  Doubt- 
less Turgeneiff  would  have  been  one  of  the  first 
to  recognize  the  unassuming  realistic  talents  of 
Duse.  There  is  nothing  more  touching  than  his 
adjuration  to  Tolstoy  to  forsake  his  half-cracked 
philosophy  and  return  to  literature  :  — 

Very  dear  Leon  Nikolaievitch  :  It  is  a  long  time 
since  I  wrote  to  you.  I  was  then,  and  I  am  now,  on 
my  deathbed.  I  cannot  recover  ;  there  is  no  longer 
the  least  chance  of  it.  I  am  writing  to  you  expressly 
to  tell  you  how  happy  I  have  been  to  be  your  contem- 
porary, and  to  make  you  a  last  urgent  prayer.  My 
friend,  return  to  literary  work.  This  gift  has  come 
to  you  from  there  whence  everything  comes  to  us. 
Ah  !  how  happy  I  should  be  if  I  could  know  that  you 
would  listen  to  my  prayer !  .  .  .  My  friend,  great 
writer  of  our  Russian  land,  hear  my  prayer.  Let  me 
know  if  this  letter  reaches  you.  I  clasp  you  for  the 
last  time  to  my  heart  —  you  and  all  yours.  .  .  . 
I  can  write  no  more.  ...     I  am  tired. 

Tolstoy,  on  his  side,  could  never  understand 
Turgenieff's  fear  of  death.     He  said  :  — 

Some  people  wonder  at  Socrates  who  died  and  did 
not  care  to  flee  from  prison.     But  is  it  not  better  to 
die  consciously  in  fulfilment  of  one's  duty  than  un- 
expectedly from  some  stupid  bacteria  ?     And  I  have 
150 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

always  been  surprised  that  so  clever  a  man  as  Tur- 
genieff should  bear  himself  as  he  did  toward  death. 
He  was  awfully  afraid  of  death.  Is  it  not  even  in- 
comprehensible that  he  was  not  afraid  to  be  afraid 
of  death  ?  And  that  darkness  of  reason  was  really 
astonishing  in  him!  He  and  Prince  D.  D.  Urusoff 
used  to  discuss  religion,  and  Turgenieff  used  to  dis- 
pute and  dispute,  and  all  of  a  sudden  he  would  no 
longer  be  able  to  control  himself,  and  would  cover 
up  his  ears,  and,  pretending  that  he  had  forgotten 
Urusoff's  name,  would  shout,  "  I  won't  listen  any 
longer  to  that  Prince  Trubetzkoy." 

And  Tolstoy  mimicked  Turgenieff 's  voice  until  one 
would  have  thought  the  man  was  there  in  person. 

Turgenieff  first  met  de  Maupassant  in  1876. 
"  A  door  opened.  A  giant  came  in  —  a  giant  with 
a  silver  head,  as  they  would  say  in  a  fairy  tale." 
Thus  the  younger  describes  the  elder  man.  M. 
Halperine-Kaminsky  has  set  at  rest  the  dis- 
quieting rumors  of  certain  alleged  strictures  upon 
his  friends,  said  to  have  been  made  by  Turgenieff 
in  letters  to  Sacher-Masoch.  Daudet  finally  de- 
clared that  he  did  not  believe  their  validity. 
"Turgenieff  was  not  a  hypocrite,"  he  wrote  to 
Kaminsky.  The  Slavic  temperament  is  difficult 
of  decipherment.  Especially  difficult  was  Tur- 
genieff. The  shining  and  clear  surfaces  of  his 
art  covered  depths  undreamed  of  by  his  Parisian 
friends.  Mr.  James  speaks  of  his  reservations 
and  discriminations  and  "  above  all  the  great 
back  garden  of  his  Slav  imagination  and  his 
I5i 


OVERTONES 

Germanic  culture,  into  which  the  door  constantly 
stood  open,  and  the  grandsons  of  Balzac  were 
not,  I  think,  particularly  free  to  accompany 
him."  M.  Renan  voices  it  better  in  his  speech 
over  the  dead  body  of  the  great  Russian.  "  Tur- 
genieff,"  Mr.  James  translates  it,  "  received  by 
the  mysterious  decree  which  marks  out  human 
vocations  the  gift  which  is  noble  beyond  all 
others.  He  was  born  essentially  impersonal. 
His  conscience  was  not  that  of  an  individual  to 
whom  nature  had  been  more  or  less  generous ; 
it  was  in  some  sort  the  conscience  of  a  people. 
Before  he  was  born  he  had  lived  for  thousands 
of  years ;  infinite  successions  of  reveries  had 
amassed  themselves  in  the  depths  of  his  heart. 
No  man  has  been  as  much  as  he  the  incarnation 
of  a  whole  race ;  generations  of  ancestors  lost 
in  the  sleep  of  centuries,  speechless,  came  through 
him  to  life  and  utterance."  This  one,  said 
to  be  lacking  in  the  core  of  patriotism,  could 
write :  — 

"  In  days  of  doubt,  in  days  of  anxious  thought 
on  the  destiny  of  my  native  land,  thou  alone  art 
my  support  and  my  staff.  Oh,  great,  powerful, 
Russian  tongue,  truthful  and  free  !  If  it  were 
not  for  thee  how  should  not  man  despair  at  the 
sight  of  what  is  going  on  at  home  ?  But  it  is 
inconceivable  that  such  a  language  has  not  been 
given  to  great  people." 

Prince  Krapotkin  in  his  Autobiography  of  a 
Revolutionist  thus  describes  Turgcnieff :  — 
152 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

His  appearance  is  well  known.  Tall,  strongly  built, 
the  head  covered  with  soft  and  thick  gray  hair,  he  was 
certainly  beautiful ;  his  eyes  gleamed  with  intelligence, 
not  devoid  of  a  touch  of  humor,  and  his  whole  manner 
testified  to  that  simplicity  and  absence  of  affectation 
which  are  characteristic  of  all  the  best  Russian  writers. 
His  fine  head  revealed  a  formidable  development  of 
brain  power,  and  when  he  died,  and  Paul  Bert,  with 
Paul  Reclus  (the  surgeon),  weighed  his  brain,  it  so 
much  surpassed  the  heaviest  brain  then  known  —  that 
of  Cuvier — reaching  something  over  two  thousand 
grammes,  that  they  would  not  trust  to  their  scales,  but 
got  new  ones,  to  repeat  the  weighing.  His  talk  was 
especially  remarkable.  He  spoke,  as  he  wrote,  in 
images.  When  he  wanted  to  develop  an  idea,  he  did 
not  resort  to  arguments,  although  he  was  a  master  in 
philosophical  discussions ;  he  illustrated  his  idea  by 
a  scene  presented  in  a  form  as  beautiful  as  if  it  had 
been  taken  out  of  one  of  his  novels. 

Of  all  novel  writers  of  our  century,  Turg^nieff  has 
certainly  attained  the  greatest  perfection  as  an  artist, 
and  his  prose  sounds  to  the  Russian  ear  like  music  — 
music  as  deep  as  that  of  Beethoven. 

Touching  on  the  objections  raised  by  the 
Nihilists  as  to  the  truth  of  the  portrait  of  Bazaroff, 
Prince  Krapotkin  writes  :  — 

The  principal  novels  —  the  series  of  Dmitri  Rudin, 
A  Nobleman's  Nest,  On  the  Eve,  Fathers  and  Sons, 
Smoke,  and  Virgin  Soil  —  represent  the  leading  "  his- 
tory making"  types  of  the  educated  classes  of  Russia, 
which    evolved  in    rapid    succession   after    1S48:    rl< 

153 


OVERTONES 

sketched  with  a  fulness  of  philosophical  conception 
and  humanitarian  understanding  and  an  artistic  beauty 
which  have  no  parallel  in  any  other  literature.  Yet 
Fathers  and  Sons  —  a  novel  which  he  rightly  consid- 
ered his  profoundest  work  —  was  received  by  the  young 
people  of  Russia  with  a  loud  protest.  Our  youth  de- 
clared that  the  Nihilist  Bazaroff  was  by  no  means  a 
true  representation  of  his  class ;  many  described  him 
even  as  a  caricature  upon  nihilism.  This  misunder- 
standing deeply  affected  Turgenieff,  and,  although  a 
reconciliation  between  him  and  the  young  generation 
took  place  later  on,  at  St.  Petersburg,  after  he  had 
written  Virgin  Soil,  the  wound  inflicted  upon  him  by 
these  attacks  was  never  healed. 

He  knew  from  Lavroff  that  I  was  a  devoted  admirer 
of  his  writings ;  and  one  day,  as  we  were  returning  in 
a  carriage  from  a  visit  to  Antokolsky's  studio,  he 
asked  me  what  I  thought  of  Bazaroff.  I  frankly  re- 
plied, "  Bazaroff  is  an  admirable  painting  of  the  nihilist, 
but  one  feels  that  you  did  not  love  him  as  much  as 
you  did  your  other  heroes  !  "  "  No,  I  loved  him,  in- 
tensely loved  him,"  Turgenieff  replied,  with  an  unex- 
pected vigor.  "  Wait ;  when  we  get  home  I  will  show 
you  my  diary,  in  which  I  noted  how  I  wept  when  I 
had  ended  the  novel  with  Bazaroff  s  death."  Turge- 
nieff certainly  loved  the  intellectual  aspect  of  Bazaroff. 
He  so  identified  himself  with  the  nihilist  philosophy 
of  his  hero  that  he  even  kept  a  diary  in  his  name,  ap- 
preciating the  current  events  from  Bazaroffs  point  of 
view.  But  I  think  that  he  admired  him  more  than 
he  loved  him.  In  a  brilliant  lecture  on  Hamlet  and 
Don  Quixote,  he  divided  the  history  makers  of  man- 
kind into  two  classes,  represented  by  one  or  the  other 

'  54 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

of  these  characters.  "  Analysis  first  of  all,  and  ego- 
tism, and  therefore  no  faith  ;  an  egotist  cannot  even 
believe  in  himself;"  so  he  characterized  Hamlet. 
"  Therefore  he  is  a  sceptic,  and  never  will  achieve 
anything  ;  while  Don  Quixote  who  fights  against  wind- 
mills, and  takes  a  barber's  plate  for  the  magic  helm 
of  Mambrin  (who  of  us  has  never  made  the  same  mis- 
take?) is  a  leader  of  the  masses,  because  the  masses 
always  follow  those  who,  taking  no  heed  of  the  sar- 
casms of  the  majority,  or  even  of  persecutions,  march 
straight  forward,  keeping  their  eyes  fixed  upon  a  goal 
which  they  alone  may  see.  They  search,  they  fall, 
but  they  rise  again,  and  find  it  —  and  by  right,  too. 
Yet,  although  Hamlet  is  a  sceptic,  and  disbelieves  in 
Good,  he  does  not  disbelieve  in  Evil.  He  hates  it ; 
Evil  and  deceit  are  his  enemies ;  and  his  scepticism 
is  not  indifferentism,  but  only  negation  and  doubt, 
which  finally  consume  his  will." 

These  thoughts  of  Turgenieff  give,  I  think,  the  true 
key  for  understanding  his  relations  to  his  heroes.  He 
himself  and  several  of  his  best  friends  belonged  more 
or  less  to  the  Hamlets.  He  loved  Hamlet  and  ad- 
mired Don  Quixote.  So  he  admired  also  Bazaroff. 
He  represented  his  superiority  well,  but  he  could  not 
surround  him  with  that  tender,  poetical  love  to  a  sick 
friend  which  he  bestowed  on  his  heroes  when  they 
approached  the  Hamlet  type.  It  would  have  been  out 
of  place. 

Although  suffering  from  a  cancer  in  the  spinal 
cord,  Turgenieff  wrote  to  Alexander  III,  begging 
him  to  give  Russia  a  constitution  —  this  was  in 
the  autumn  of  1881  — but  of  course  to  no  pur- 

1 ; ; 


OVERTONES 

pose.  The  man  whose  books  helped  to  bring 
about  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs  died  in  exile, 
not  even  a  prophet  in  the  literature  of  his  own 
country.  Yet,  because  of  their  poets  and  prose 
masters  Russia  will  one  day  be  free,  and  then 
Turgenieff's  name  will  be  writ  in  golden  letters 
as  the  artist,  the  patriot. 

II 

In  1868  he  writes  from  Baden  to  Ambroise 
Thomas  about  a  sketch  made  by  Viardot  for 
the  libretto  of  an  opera.  Nothing,  however, 
came  of  the  matter.  But  only  in  the  new  letters 
translated  by  Rosa  Newmarch,  do  we  catch 
Turgenieff's  opinion  of  the  neo-Russian  school 
of  music.  For  the  most  part  it  is  rather  a  con- 
temptuous opinion  and  not  pleasant  reading  for 
his  contemporaries.  He  hated  humbug,  and  the 
cry  of  young  Russia,  with  its  hatred  of  the 
sources  whence  it  derived  its  inspiration,  angered 
the  writer.  In  correspondence  with  Vladimir 
Vassilievich  Stassov  we  catch  glimpses  of  the 
tempest  brewing  in  the  Slavic  samovar. 

"  Have  faith  in  your  nationality,"  preaches 
Stassov,  "  and  you  shall  have  works  also." 
"  Russian  individuality !  "  cries  the  contemptu- 
ous voice  of  Turgenieff.  "  What  humbug,  what 
blindness  and  crass  ignorance,  what  willful  dis- 
regard of  all  that  Europe  has  done  !  " 

He  loved  Schumann,  naturally  enough,  this 
156 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

Schumann,  himself  a  dreamer  of  dreams.  But 
Balakirew,  Glinka,  "a  rough  diamond,"  and  the 
rest  he  would  not  have.  He  believed  in  the 
genius  of  the  sculptor  Antokolsky  and  in 
Tschai'kowsky  and  Rimsky-Korsakoff.  I  wonder 
if  Tschai'kowsky  and  Turgenieff  ever  met  ?  Prob- 
ably they  did,  although  I  can  find  no  reference 
in  the  correspondence.  He  listened  to  Dar- 
gomijsky,  to  Cui,  to  Moussorgsky,  but  could  find 
nothing  but  "  Slavonic  barbarism  "  and  "  undis- 
guised Nihilism."  He  loved  the  playing  of 
Anton  Rubinstein,  but  his  operas  —  !  He  writes 
Stassov  in  1872  :  — 

You  are  quite  wrong  in  fancying  that  I  "  dislike  " 
Glinka  :  he  was  a  very  great  and  original  man.  But 
come,  now,  it  is  quite  different  with  the  others  — 
with  your  M.  Dargomijsky  and  his  Stone  Guest.  It 
will  always  remain  one  of  the  greatest  mysteries  of 
my  life  how  such  intelligent  people  as  you  and  Cui, 
for  example,  can  possibly  find  in  these  limp,  color- 
less, feeble, —  I  beg  your  pardon,  — senile  recitatives, 
interwoven  now  and  then  with  a  few  howls,  to  lend 
color  and  imagination  —  how  you  can  find  in  this 
feeble  piping  not  only  music,  but  a  new,  genial,  and 
epoch-making  music.  Can  it  be  unconscious  patri- 
otism, I  wonder  ?  I  confess  that,  except  a  sacrile- 
gious attempt  on  one  of  Poushkin's  best  poems,  I  find 
nothing  in  it.     And  now  cut  off  my  head,  if  you  like  ! 

Of  all  these  young  Russian  musicians,  only  two 
have  decided  talent  —  Tschai'kowsky  and  Rimsky- 
Korsakoff.  All  the  rest,  for  what  they  are  worth, 
may  be  put  in  a  sack  and  thrown  into  the  water  ! 

157 


OVERTONES 

Not,  of  course,  as  men  —  as  men  they  are  charming 
—  but  as  artists.  The  Egyptian  Pharaoh  Rameses 
XXIX  is  not  more  utterly  forgotten  than  these  men 
will  be  fifteen  or  twenty  years  hence.  This  is  my 
one  consolation. 

This  prophecy  is  accomplished.  A  new  gen- 
eration has  arisen  in  Russia. 

Speaking  of  some  piano  pieces  of  Stcher- 
batchev  he  confesses  to  Stassov :  — 

Stcherbatchev,  as  a  man,  produces  an  unfavorable 
impression  ;  but  this  need  not  imply  that  he  is  desti- 
tute of  talent,  and  I  should  be  very  much  obliged 
to  you  if  you  would  send  me  his  compositions  as 
soon  as  they  appear.  By  the  way,  you  have  no 
ground  for  fancying  that  Rubinstein  will  treat  them 
with  contempt ;  to  me,  at  least,  he  spoke  of  Stcher- 
batchev as  a  very  talented  young  man.  .  .  .  The 
day  before  yesterday  I  received  a  parcel  containing 
two  copies  of  the  Zigzags.  I  have  listened  with  the 
utmost  attention  to  two  consecutive  performances  of 
them,  and  the  interpretation  was  excellent.  To  my 
great  regret  I  have  not  been  able  to  discover  in  them 
the  merits  about  which  you  wrote  to  me.  I  cannot 
say  whether  in  time  original  talent  will  show  itself 
in  Stcherbatchev,  but  at  present  I  can  see  nothing 
in  him  but  the  "  clamor  of  captive  thoughts."  All  this 
has  been  written  under  the  influence  of  Schumann's 
Carnaval,  with  a  mixture  of  Liszt's  bizarreries 
dragged  in  without  motive.  It  is  altogether  lacking 
in  ideas  ;  is  tedious,  strained,  and  wanting  in  life. 
I58 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

The    first   page   pleased    me    most ;     the    theme    is 
commonplace,  but  the  working  out  is  interesting. 

For  this  you  may  chop  off  my  head,  if  you  please. 
I  thank  you,  all  the  same,  for  your  kindness  in  send- 
ing the  music.  .   .  . 

In  short,  pray  believe  that  if  I  find  Mozart's  Don 
Juan  a  work  of  genius,  and  Dargomijsky's  Don  Juan 
formless  and  absurd,  it  is  not  because  Mozart  is  an 
authority  and  others  think  so,  or  because  Dargomijsky 
is  unknown  outside  his  little  circle,  but  simply  be- 
cause Mozart  pleases  me,  and  Dargomijsky  does  not. 
Neither  do  the  Zigzags  please  me.  That  is  the  end 
of  the  matter !  .   .  . 

So  not  for  one  moment  do  I  doubt  the  worthless- 
ness  (to  my  mind)  of  Maximov's  pictures.  I  at  once 
placed  him  in  the  same  category  as  your  favorites, 
MM.  Dargomijsky,  Stcherbatchev,  Repin,  and  tutti 
quanti ;  all  those  half-baked  geniuses  filled  with 
spiced  stuffing  in  which  you  keep  detecting  the  real 
essence. 

He  also  speaks  casually  of  Saint-Saens  and 
his  wife. 

Stassov  sums  up  the  matter  this  way:  "Tur- 
genieff,  a  great  writer,  was,  as  might  be  expected 
from  a  Russian,  realistic  and  sincere  in  his  own 
novels  and  tales ;  but  in  his  tastes  and  views  of 
art  his  cosmopolitanism  made  him  the  enemy  of 
realism  and  sincerity  in  others.  In  such  ideas 
and  in  such  unaccountable  prejudices  he  elected 
to  spend  his  whole  life." 

Which  proves  that  the  Russian  critic  was 
159 


OVERTONES 

ultra-Russian  in  his  view  of  Turgenieff.  The 
new  Russians  are  descendants  of  Chopin  and 
Schumann  and  again  Chopin.  Few  have  at- 
tained to  largeness  of  utterance,  perhaps  Tschai'- 
kowsky alone.  Men  HkeBorodineandGlazanouw 
over-accent  their  peculiarities,  and  much  of  their 
music  —  when  it  is  not  sheer  imitation  —  is  but 
rude  art.  Rimsky-Korsakoff  has  fallen  into  the 
rut  of  cosmopolitanism,  as  did  Rubinstein,  in- 
dulging in  supersubtleties  of  orchestral  painting, 
and  has  never  conceived  an  original  idea.  Turge- 
nieff was  right  then,  this  man  who  loved  Russia, 
loved  her  faults  and  dared  to  catalogue  them  in 
his  beautiful  novels.  His  art  in  its  finish  reminds 
one  of  Chopin's  ;  there  is  vaporous  melancholy, 
the  vague  sighing  for  days  that  have  vanished  and 
the  dumb  resignation,  —  the  resignation  of  the 
Slav  peoples.  But  his  idealism  was  robuster  than 
Chopin's  and  his  execution  of  character  hardier. 
Once  at  Flaubert's  dinner  table  the  talk  turned 
on  love.  De  Goncourt,  I  have  forgotten  which 
one,  told  Turgenieff  that  he  was  "  saturated  with 
femininity."     The  other  answered  :  — 

With  me,  neither  books  nor  anything  whatever  in 
the  world  could  take  the  place  of  woman.  How  can 
I  make  that  plain  to  you  ?  I  find  it  is  only  love  which 
produces  a  certain  expansion  of  the  being,  that  noth- 
ing else  gives  ...  eh  ?  Listen  !  When  I  was  quite  a 
young  man  there  was  a  miller's  girl  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  St.  Petersburg,  whom  I  used  to  see  when  out 
hunting.  She  was  charming,  very  fair,  with  a  flash  of 
1 60 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

the  eye  rather  common  among  us.  She  would  accept 
nothing  from  me.  But  one  day  she  said  to  me,  "  You 
must  give  me  a  present." 

"What  is  it  you  want?  " 

"  Bring  me  some  scented  soap  from  St.  Peters- 
burg." 

I  brought  her  the  soap.  She  took  it,  disappeared, 
came  back  blushing,  and  murmured,  offering  me  her 
hands,  delicately  scented  :  — 

"  Kiss  my  hands  —  as  you  kiss  the  hands  of  ladies 
in  drawing-rooms  at  St.  Petersburg." 

I  threw  myself  on  my  knees  —  and  you  know,  that 
was  the  finest  moment  of  my  life. 

Like  Chopin  and  Tschai'kowsky,  Turgenieff 
was  all  love. 


BALZAC   AS   MUSIC   CRITIC 

While  I  think  that  George  Moore's  compara- 
tive estimate  of  Shakespeare  and  Balzac  is  a 
trifle  more  Celtic  than  critical,  yet  there  can 
be  no  denial  made  to  the  assertion  that  Balzac 
stands  next  to  Shakespeare  —  if  not  exactly  on 
his  level  —  in  his  astonishing  fecundity  of  im- 
agination. "  A  monstrous  debauch  of  the  im- 
agination," Henley  called  the  Human  Comedy; 
but  surely  no  more  of  a  debauch  than  the 
Plays.  All  abnormal  productivity  of  the  intel- 
lect gives  this  impression.  Look  at  Rabelais. 
There  are  over  two  thousand  figures  in  the  Hu- 
man Comedy,  all  clearly  characterized,  no  two 
m  161 


OVERTONES 

alike ;  and  every  man  and  woman  in  the  work 
you  might  meet  in  a  day's  stroll  about  Paris. 

Monstrous,  yes ;  but  so  is  Beethoven,  so  is 
Michael  Angelo  monstrous.  All  genius  has 
something  monstrous  in  it — something  of  what 
Nietzsche  so  happily  called  the  over  man. 

Balzac's  Gambara  and  Massimilla  Doni  — 
what  genius  he  had  for  selecting  names  which 
outwardly  and  inwardly  fitted  his  character! 
After  reading  the  former  I  felt  almost  tempted 
into  echoing  Mr.  Moore's  extravagant  assertion. 
Balzac  is  indeed  a  magician  and  not  a  novelist. 
What  puts  him  apart  from  other  novelists,  even 
from  his  technical  superior,  Flaubert,  is  his  fac- 
ulty of  vision.  He  is  a  Seer,  not  a  novelist.  Any 
motive  he  touched,  whether  usury  or  music- 
erotics  or  patriotism,  he  vivified  with  his  pro- 
phetic imagination.  He  saw  his  theme  con- 
cretely ;  he  saw  its  origins,  its  roots  in  the  dead 
past;  and  plunging  his  eyes  into  the  future  he 
saw  its  ghost,  its  spiritual  aura,  its  ultimate  evo- 
lution. Such  a  man  as  Balzac  might  have  been 
a  second  Bonaparte,  a  second  Spencer.  He  had 
science,  and  he  had  imagination ;  and  he  pre- 
ferred to  be  the  social  historian  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  the  greatest  romancer  that  ever 
lived,  and  a  profound  philosopher  besides.  All 
modern  novelists  nest  in  his  books,  draw  nour- 
ishment from  them,  suck  in  their  very  souls  from 
his  vast  fund  of  spirituality.  The  difference  be- 
tween such  a  giant  as  Balzac  and  such  a  novelist 
162 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

as  Thackeray  is  that  the  latter  draws  delightful 
and  artistic  pictures  of  manners ;  but  never  turns 
a  soul  inside  out  for  us.  The  best  way  to  de- 
scribe Balzac  is  to  enumerate  the  negatives  of 
his  contemporaries  and  successors.  All  they 
lacked  and  lack  he  had  in  such  amazing  prodi- 
gality that  comparison  is  not  only  impossible, 
it  is  brutal. 

Balzac  and  music  !  Balzac  and  women  !  Bal- 
zac and  money!  Balzac  and  politics!  Or, — 
Balzac  and  any  subject!  The  encyclopaedic 
knowledge,  extraordinary  sympathy  and  powers 
of  expression  —  do  they  not  all  fairly  drench 
every  line  the  man  wrote  ?  He  could  analyze 
the  art  of  painting  and  forsee  its  future  affini- 
ties for  impressionism  —  read  The  Unknown 
Masterpiece — just  as  in  Gambara  he  divined 
Berlioz,  Wagner,  and  Richard  Strauss.  I  am 
quite  sure  that  Wagner  read  Balzac.  Gambara 
was  finished  June,  1837,  and  there  are  things  in 
it  that  could  only  have  been  written  about  Ber- 
lioz. The  key  to  the  book,  however,  is  passion, 
not  any  particular  personality.  Balzac  always 
searched  for  the  master  passion  in  men  and 
women's  lives.  Given  the  clew-note,  he  devel- 
oped the  theme  into  symphonic  proportions.  It 
is  Andrea's  love  of  intrigue  that  leads  him  to 
follow  the  beautiful  Marianna,  wife  of  the  com- 
poser Gambara,  —  a  fantastic  creation  worthy  of 
Hoffmann.  He  is  an  Italian  in  Paris,  who  wrote 
a  mass  for  the  anniversary  of  Beethoven's  death, 
163 


OVERTONES 

and  also  an  opera  —  Mahomet.  But  that  opera  ! 
Has  such  a  score  ever  been  dreamed  of  by  any 
one  except  Richard  Strauss  ?  Gambara  is  a 
poor  man,  looked  upon  as  a  lunatic,  living  at  an 
Italian  cook  shop  kept  by  Giardini,  —  the  latter 
one  of  Balzac's  most  delightful  discoveries.  Born 
at  Cremona,  Gambara  studied  music  in  its  en- 
tirety, especially  orchestration.  To  him  music 
was  a  science  and  an  art  —  fancy  writers  of  fic- 
tion going  into  the  philosophy  of  music  seventy- 
five  years  ago! — to  him  tones  were  definite  ideas, 
not  merely  vibrations  that  agitate  nervous  cen- 
tres. Music  alone  has  the  power  of  restoring 
us  to  ourselves,  while  other  arts  give  us  defined 
pleasures.  Mahomet  is  a  trilogy,  the  libretto  by 
Gambara  himself  —  mark  this  familiar  detail. 
It  contained  The  Martyrs,  Mahomet,  and  Jeru- 
salem Delivered, — the  God  of  the  West,  the 
God  of  the  East,  and  the  struggles  of  religions 
around  a  tomb.  In  this  immense  frame,  phi- 
losophy, patriotism,  racial  antagonisms,  love,  the 
magic  of  ancient  Sabianism  and  Oriental  poetry 
of  the  Jewish  —  culminating  in  the  Arabian  — 
are  all  displayed.  As  Gambara  says,  "  Ah  !  to 
be  a  great  musician,  it  is  necessary  also  to  be 
very  learned.  Without  knowledge,  no  local 
color,  no  ideas  in  the  music."  This  irresisti- 
bly reminds  one  of  a  phrase  from  Wagner's  note- 
book. 

The  story  of  the  opera  —  too  long  to  set  down 
here — as  told  by  Gambara,  is  wonderful.     It  has 
164 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

the  ring  of  an  analytical  programme  to  some  new- 
fangled and  heretical  symphonic  poem.  Here  is 
the  curious  medley  of  psychology,  musical  refei- 
ences,  history,  stage  directions,  cries  of  hysteria, 
and  much  clotted  egotism.  There  is  the  clash 
of  character,  the  shock  of  events  ;  and  it  is  well 
to  note  such  a  phrase  as  this  :  "  The  dark  and 
gloomy  color  of  this  finale  [Act  I]  is  varied 
by  the  motives  of  the  three  women  who  predict 
to  Mahomet  his  triumph,  and  whose  phrases 
will  be  found  developed  in  the  third  act,  in  the 
scene  where  Mahomet  tastes  the  delights  of 
his  grandeur."  Does  this  not  forestall  Wag- 
ner's Ring  ?  or  did  Balzac  really  find  the  entire 
idea  in  Hoffmann's  Kater  Murr  ?  Is  not 
Kapellmeister  Kreisler  the  first  of  his  line  ?  Now, 
while  there  seems  to  be  far  too  much  praying  in 
this  drama  of  soul  and  action,  it  is  not  such  a 
farrago  as  it  appears  at  first  reading.  I  imagine 
that  Balzac  knew  little  of  the  technics  of  music ; 
yet  he  guessed  matters  with  astonishing  perspi- 
cacity. His  characterization  of  the  megaloma- 
niacal  Mahomet,  and  his  epileptic  grandeurs 
would  do  as  a  portrait  of  most  founders  of  new 
religions.  Balzac  had  Voltaire  to  draw  upon  ; 
but  he  makes  the  epilepsy  a  big  motive  in  Ma- 
homet's life,  —  as  it  is  in  the  lives  of  the  majority 
of  religious  geniuses  and  fanatics,  from  Buddha 
to  the  newest  faith-curing  healer. 

And  how  was  this  extraordinary  music  and 
libretto  received  by  Gambara's  wife,  her  admirer, 
165 


OVERTONES 

and  the  Italian  cook  ?  "  There  was  not  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  poetical  or  musical  idea  in  the 
stunning  cacophony  which  smote  the  ears :  the 
principles  of  harmony,  the  first  rules  of  compo- 
sition, were  totally  foreign  to  this  shapeless  cre- 
ation. Instead  of  music,  learnedly  connected, 
which  Gambara  described,  his  fingers  produced 
a  succession  of  fifths,  sevenths,  octaves,  major 
thirds,  and  steps  from  fourth  without  sixth  to 
the  bass,  a  combination  of  discordant  sounds 
thrown  at  hazard  which  seemed  to  combine  to 
torture  the  least  delicate  ear."  I  am  positive, 
nevertheless,  that  it  must  have  been  great, 
wonderful,  new  music. 

As  the  strange  discords  "  howled  beneath  his 
fingers,"  Gambara,  we  are  told,  almost  fainted 
with  intoxicating  joy.  Furthermore,  he  had  a 
raucous  voice,  —  the  true  voice  of  a  composer. 
"  He  stamped,  panted,  yelled  ;  his  fingers  equalled 
in  rapidity  the  forked  head  of  a  serpent ;  finally, 
at  the  last  howl  of  the  piano,  he  threw  himself 
backward,  and  let  his  head  fall  upon  the  back 
of  his  arm-chair." 

Poor  Gambara  !  poor  Kapellmeister  Kreisler  ! 
And  how  much  it  all  sounds  like  the  early  stories 
told  of  Richard  Wagner  trying  to  express  on  the 
treble  keyboard  his  gigantic  dreams,  his  tonal 
epics  :  and  for  such  supercilious  men  and  critics 
as  Mendelssohn,  Hiller,  Meyerbeer,  Berlioz,  and 
Schumann  ! 

Signor  Giardini,  the  Italian  cook  in  Gambara, 
1 66 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

stands  for  a  portrait  of  the  true  musical  Philis- 
tine ;  he  has  a  pretty  taste  in  music,  but  melody, 
or  what  he  conceives  to  be  melody,  is  his  shib- 
boleth. Andrea  Marcosini,  a  nobleman  in 
pursuit  of  Gambara's  wife,  and  a  musical  dilet- 
tante, finds  Giardini  a  gabbling  boaster.  "  Yes, 
your  excellency,  in  less  than  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  you  will  know  what  kind  of  a  man  I  am. 
I  have  introduced  into  the  Italian  kitchen  refine- 
ments that  will  surprise  you.  I  am  a  Neapolitan, 
—  that  is  to  say,  a  born  cook.  But  what  good 
is  instinct  without  science  ?  Science  ?  I  have 
passed  thirty  years  in  acquiring  it,  and  see  what 
it  has  brought  me  to.  My  history  is  that  of  all 
men  of  talent.  My  experiments  and  tests  have 
ruined  three  restaurants  established  successfully 
at  Naples,  Parma,  and  Rome." 

He  keeps  a  little  place  where  Italian  refugees 
and  men  who  have  failed  in  the  black,  weltering 
symphony  of  Parisian  life  gather  and  feed  at 
dusk.  It  is  a  queer,  interesting  crew.  Here  is 
a  poor  composer  —  not  Gambara  —  of  romances. 
"  You  see  what  a  florid  complexion,  what  self- 
satisfaction,  how  little  there  is  in  his  features,  so 
well  disposed  for  romance.  He  who  accompanies 
him  is  Gigelmi."  The  latter  is  a  deaf  conductor 
of  orchestra.  Then  there  is  Ottoboni,  a  political 
refugee  —  a  nice,  clean  old  gentleman,  but  con- 
sidered dangerous  by  the  Italian  government.  A 
journalist  is  discovered  at  the  table,  the  poorest 
of  the  lot.  He  tells  the  truth  about  the  theatri- 
167 


OVERTONES 

cal  performances,  hence  writes  for  an  obscure 
journal  and  is  miserably  paid.  Enter  Gambara. 
He  is  bald,  about  forty,  a  man  of  refinement, 
with  brains,  —  a  sufferer  in  a  word.  Though  his 
dress  was  free  from  oddity,  the  composer's 
appearance  was  not  lacking  in  nobility.  A 
conversation  follows,  merging  into  a  debate, 
modulating  angrily  into  a  furious  discussion 
about  art.     It  is  wonderfully  executed. 

The  composer  of  romances  has  written  a  mass 
for  the  anniversary  of  Beethoven's  death.  He 
asks  the  count,  with  assumed  modesty,  if  he  will 
not  attend  the  performance.  "Thank  you,"  re- 
sponds Andrea.  "  I  do  not  feel  myself  endowed 
with  the  organs  necessary  to  the  appreciation  of 
French  singing  ;  but  if  you  were  dead,  monsieur, 
and  Beethoven  had  written  the  mass,  I  should 
not  fail  to  hear  it."  It  may  be  observed  that 
this  epigram  has  been  remembered  by  several 
generations  since  Balzac.  Von  Biilow  is  credited 
with  it.  Behold  the  original  in  all  its  pristine 
glory  !  The  deaf  orchestra  conductor  also  has 
his  say  :  "  Music  exists  independently  of  execu- 
tion. In  opening  Beethoven's  symphony  in  C 
minor  a  musical  man  is  soon  translated  into  the 
world  of  fancy  upon  the  golden  wings  of  the 
theme  in  G  natural,  repeated  in  E  by  the  horns. 
He  sees  a  whole  nature  by  turns  illuminated  by 
dazzling  sheafs  of  light,  shadowed  by  clouds  of 
melancholy,  cheered  by  divine  song."  It  is  just 
possible  that  some  one  told  Balzac  of  the  inde- 
168 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

terminate  tonality  at  the  opening  of  the  Fifth 
Symphony,  though  he  gets  his  scoring  mixed. 

"  Beethoven  is  surpassed  by  the  new  school," 
said  the  writer  of  romances,  disdainfully.  "  He 
is  not  yet  understood,"  answered  the  count; 
"  how  can  he  be  surpassed  ?  Beethoven  has 
extended  the  boundaries  of  instrumental  music, 
and  no  one  has  followed  him  in  his  flight." 
Gambara  dissented  by  a  movement  of  the  head. 
"  His  works  are  especially  remarkable  for  the 
simplicity  of  the  plan,  and  for  the  manner  in 
which  this  plan  is  followed  out.  With  the  major- 
ity of  composers  the  orchestral  parts,  wild  and 
disorderly,  combine  only  for  momentary  effect ; 
they  do  not  always  cooperate  by  the  regularity 
of  their  progress  to  the  effect  of  a  piece  as  a 
whole.  With  Beethoven  the  effects  are,  so  to 
speak,  distributed  in  advance."  This  is  not  bad 
criticism  for  a  writer  of  fiction.  Think  of  the 
banalities  perpetrated  about  the  same  time  by 
Henri  Beyle,  Stendhal,  otherwise  a  master  of 
psychology. 

Then  the  Count  Andrea  proceeds  to  demolish 
the  reputation  of  Rossini  by  comparing  the  "  ca- 
pering, musical  chit-chat,  gossipy,  perfumed" 
school  of  the  Italian  master  to  Beethoven. 
"  Long  live  German  music  !  —  when  it  can  sing," 
he  adds  sotto  voce.  Of  course  there  is  a  lively 
row,  the  host  having  much  to  say.  Later  Gam- 
bara shows  Andrea  his  Panharmonicon,  an 
instrument  which  is  to  replace  an  entire  orchestra. 
169 


OVERTONES 

He  plays  upon  it.  They  are  all  enchanted. 
Every  instrument  is  represented.  The  total 
impression  is  overwhelming.  Gambara  sang  to 
its  accompaniment  —  in  which  the  magic  execu- 
tion of  Paganini  and  Liszt  was  revealed  —  the 
adieus  of  Khadijeh,  Mahomet's  first  wife.  "Who 
could  have  dictated  to  you  such  chants  ? "  de- 
manded the  count.  "The  spirit,"  replied  Gam- 
bara ;  "  when  he  appears,  everything  seems  to 
me  on  fire.  I  see  melodies  face  to  face,  beautiful 
and  fresh,  colored  like  flowers ;  they  radiate, 
they  resound,  and  I  listen,  but  an  infinite  time  is 
required  to  reproduce  them."  It  is  a  pity  this 
man  drank  so  much.  There  follows  an  admirable 
exposition  of  Meyerbeer's  Robert  le  Diable  too 
long  for  transcription.  In  the  end  comes  ruin. 
Gambara's  wife,  tiring  of  his  habits,  his  slow 
progress  toward  fame,  leaves  him  for  Andrea. 
Abandoned,  Gambara  falls  into  disgrace,  into 
dire  poverty.  The  Panharmonicon  is  sold  by 
the  sheriff  and  his  scores  sold  for  waste  paper. 
"  On  the  day  following  the  sale  the  scores  had 
enveloped  at  the  Halle  butter,  fish,  and  fruits. 
Thus  three  great  operas  of  which  this  poor  man 
spoke,  but  which  a  former  Neapolitan  cook,  now 
a  simple  huckster,  said  were  a  heap  of  nonsense, 
had  been  disseminated  in  Paris,  and  devoured  by 
the  baskets  of  retailers."  Worse  remained. 
After  years  Marianna,  the  runaway  wife,  returns, 
lean,  dirty,  old,  and  withered.  Gambara  receives 
her  with  tired,  faithful  arms.  Together  they 
170 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

sing  duets,  with  guitar  accompaniment,  on  dusty 
boulevards  after  dark.  Marianna  makes  Gam- 
bara  drink  cheap  brandy  so  that  he  will  play 
well.  He  gives  bits  from  his  half-forgotten 
operas.  A  duchess  asks :  "  Where  do  you  get 
this  music  ?  "  "  From  the  opera  of  Mahomet," 
replied  Marianna ;  "  Rossini  has  composed  a 
Mahomet  II,"  and  the  other  remarks  :  — 

"  W7hat  a  pity  that  they  will  not  give  us  at  the 
Italiens  the  operas  of  Rossini  with  which  we  are 
unacquainted  !  for  this  certainly  is  beautiful 
music."  Gambara  smiled  !  Thus  ends  the  career 
of  a  great  composer.  Gambara  knew  his  fail- 
ings. "  We  are  victims  of  our  own  superiority. 
My  music  is  fine;  but,  when  music  passes  from 
sensation  to  thought,  it  can  have  for  auditors 
only  people  of  genius,  for  they  alone  have  the 
power  to  develop  it."  Here  is  consolation  for 
Richard  Strauss ! 

Massimilla  Doni  is  dedicated  to  Jacques  Strunz, 
at  one  time  a  music  critic  in  Paris.  This  dedica- 
tion, charmingly  indited,  as  are  all  of  Balzac's, 
acknowledges  the  author's  indebtedness  to  the 
critic.  Massimilla  Doni  is  more  violent  and  less 
credible  than  Gambara.  The  chief  character  is  a 
musical  degenerate,  a  morbid  nobleman  whose 
solitary  pleasure  in  life  is  to  hear  two  tones  in 
perfect  concord.  This  musical  Marquis  de  Sade 
is  described  as  follows  :  "  This  man,  who  is  1 18 
years  old  on  the  registers  of  vice  and  forty-seven 
according  to  the  records  of  the  church,  has  but 
171 


OVERTONES 

one  last  means  of  enjoyment  on  earth  that  is 
capable  of  arousing  in  him  a  sense  of  life.  Yes, 
all  the  chords  are  broken,  everything  is  a  ruin  or 
a  tattered  rag  ;  the  mind,  the  intelligence,  the 
heart,  the  nerves,  all  that  produces  an  impulse  in 
man,  that  gives  him  a  glimpse  of  heaven  through 
desire  or  the  fire  of  pleasure,  depends  not  so  much 
upon  music  as  upon  one  of  the  innumerable 
effects,  a  perfect  harmony  between  two  voices, 
or  between  one  voice  and  the  first  string  of  his 
violin." 

Certainly  this  evil-minded  person  would  not 
care  for  Wagner.  He  is  attached  to  a  beautiful 
Venetian  singer,  Clara  Tinti.  It  is  she  who 
tells  of  this  horrid  Duke  Cataneo  :  — 

The  old  monkey  sits  on  my  knee  and  takes  his  vio- 
lin ;  he  plays  well  enough,  he  produces  sounds  with 
it;  I  try  to  imitate  them,  and  when  the  longed-for 
moment  arrives,  and  it  is  impossible  to  distinguish  the 
note  of  the  violin  from  the  note  that  issues  from  my 
windpipe,  then  the  old  fellow  is  in  ecstasy ;  his  dead 
eyes  emit  their  last  flames,  he  is  deliriously  happy,  and 
rolls  on  the  floor  like  a  drunken  man.  That  is  why 
he  pays  Genovese  so  handsomely.  Genovese  is  the 
only  tenor  whose  voice  sometimes  coincides  exactly 
with  mine.  Either  we  do  really  approach  that  point 
once  or  twice  in  an  evening,  or  the  duke  imagines  it; 
and  for  this  imaginary  pleasure  he  has  engaged  Geno- 
vese ;  Genovese  belongs  to  him.  No  operatic  mana- 
ger can  engage  the  singer  to  sing  without  me,  or  me 
without  him.  The  duke  educated  me  to  gratify  this 
172 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

whim,  and  I  owe  to  him  my  talent,  my  beauty,  my 
fortune.  He  will  die  in  some  spasm  caused  by  a  per- 
fect accord.  The  sense  of  hearing  is  the  only  one  that 
has  survived  in  the  shipwreck  of  his  faculties  —  that  is 
the  thread  by  which  he  clings  to  life. 

This  is  a  lovely  study  of  a  melomaniac,  is  it 
not  ?  A  man  whose  sole  passion  mounts  to  his 
ears ;  who  when  he  hears  an  accord  is  vertigi- 
nously possessed  like  a  feline  over  a  bunch  of 
catnip.  As  a  foil  to  this  delirious  duke  there  is 
a  cooler  headed  fanatic  of  music,  named  Capraja. 
He  is  a  sort  of  Di(3genes  —  never  looks  at  women 
and  lives  on  a  few  hundreds  a  year,  though  a 
rich  man.  "  Half  Turk,  half  Venetian,  he  was 
short,  coarse  looking,  and  stout.  He  had  the 
pointed  nose  of  a  doge ;  the  satirical  glance  of 
an  inquisitor  ;  a  discreet,  albeit  a  smiling  mouth." 
For  him  the  decorative  is  the  only  element  in 
music  worth  mentioning.  He  goes  to  the  opera 
every  night  of  his  life.     Hear  him  :  — 

Genovese  will  rise  very  high.  I  am  not  sure  whether 
he  understands  the  true  significance  of  music,  or  acts 
simply  by  instinct,  but  he  is  the  first  singer  with  whom 
I  have  ever  been  fully  satisfied.  I  shall  not  die  with- 
out hearing  roulades  executed  as  I  have  often  heard 
them  in  my  dreams,  when  on  waking  it  seemed  to  me 
that  I  could  see  the  notes  flying  through  the  air.  The 
roulade  is  the  highest  expression  of  art.  It  is  the  ara- 
besque which  adorns  the  most  beautiful  room  in  the 
building  —  a  little  less,  and  there  is  nothing;  a  little 
more,  and  all  is  confused.     Intrusted  with  the  mission 

173 


OVERTONES 

of  awakening  in  your  soul  a  thousand  sleeping  ideas,  it 
rustles  through  space,  sowing  in  the  air  seeds  which, 
being  gathered  up  by  the  ear,  germinate  in  the  heart. 
Believe  me  ;  Raphael,  when  painting  his  Saint  Cecilia, 
gave  music  precedence  over  poetry.  He  was  right. 
Music  appeals  to  the  heart,  while  written  words  appeal 
only  to  the  intelligence.  Music  communicates  its  ideas 
instantly,  after  the  manner  of  perfumes.  The  singer's 
voice  strikes  not  the  thought,  but  the  elements  of 
thought,  and  sets  in  motion  the  very  essence  of  our 
sensations.  It  is  a  deplorable  fact  that  the  common 
herd  has  compelled  musicians  to  adapt  their  measures 
to  words,  to  artificial  interests  ;  but  it  is  true  that  other- 
wise they  would  not  be  understood  by  the  multitude. 
The  roidade,  therefore,  is  the  only  point  left  for  the 
friends  of  pure  music,  the  lovers  of  art  in  its  nakedness, 
to  cling  to.  To-night  as  I  listened  to  that  last  cava- 
tina,  I  imagined  that  I  had  received  an  invitation  from 
a  lovely  girl  who,  by  a  single  glance,  restored  my  youth  ! 
The  enchantress  placed  a  crown  on  my  head  and  led 
me  to  the  ivory  gate  through  which  we  enter  the 
mysterious  land  of  Reverie.  I  owe  it  to  Genovese 
that  I  was  able  to  lay  aside  my  old  envelope  for  a  few 
moments,  brief  as  measured  by  watches,  but  very  long 
as  measured  by  sensations.  During  a  springtime,  balmy 
with  the  breath  of  roses,  I  was  young  and  beloved  ! 

"You  are  mistaken,  caro  Capraja,"  said  the 
duke.  "  There  is  a  power  in  music  more  magi- 
cal in  its  effects  than  that  of  the  roulade."  "What 
is  it  ?"  queried  Capraja.  "The  perfect  accord 
of  two  voices,  or  of  one  voice  and  a  violin,  which 
is  the  instrument  whose  tone  approaches  the  hu- 
174 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

man  voice  most  nearly."  Then  follows  a  rhap- 
sodic word  duel  between  the  old  amateurs,  each 
contending  for  his  favorite  form.  And  is  it  not, 
though  purposely  exaggerated,  the  same  battle 
that  is  being  fought  to  this  very  day  between  the 
formalists  and  sensationalists  ?  Some  of  us  adore 
absolute  music  and  decry  the  sensualities  of  the 
music-drama.  The  war  between  the  roulade  and 
the  accord  will  never  end.  "  Genovese's  voice 
seizes  the  very  fibres,"  cries  Capraja.  "And  La 
Tinti's  attacks  the  blood,"  rejoins  the  duke. 
Then  follows  a  remarkable  descriptive  analysis 
of  Rossini's  Moses  in  Egypt,  by  the  wealthy  and 
beautiful  Duchess  Cataneo,  otherwise  Massimilla 
Doni.  It  is  cleverly  done.  The  picture  of  the 
rising  sun  in  the  score  in  the  key  of  C  proves 
Balzac  a  poet  as  well  as  a  musician.  The  prayer, 
so  famous  because  of  Thalberg's  piano  trans- 
cription, is  also  described,  and  at  the  end  this 
opera  —  better  known  to  us  as  an  oratorio  —  is 
pronounced  superior  to  Don  Giovanni ! !  Balzac, 
Balzac ! 

There  is  a  realistic  account  of  a  small  riot  in 
the  opera  house  because  Genovese,  the  tenor, 
sings  out  of  tune.  The  Duke  Cataneo  rages 
monstrously,  Capraja  is  furious.  Both  tone- 
voluptuaries  are  deprived  of  their  accords  and 
roulades.  It  turns  out  that  the  tenor  is  in  love 
with  the  soprano,  and  once  away  from  her  pres- 
ence proves  his  art  by  singing  the  air,  Ombra 
adorata,  by  Crescentini.  This  he  does  at  mid- 
175 


OVERTONES 

night  on  the  Piazzetta,  Venice.  The  Venetian 
scene  setting  is  lovely.  Genovese  sings  his 
sweetest.  His  listeners  are  rapt  to  paradise,  but 
are  tumbled  earthwards  when  he  asks  in  injured 
accents,  "  Am  I  a  poor  singer  ? "  Listen  to 
Balzac's  comments  upon  that  phenomenon  called 
a  tenor  singer  :  "  One  and  all  regretted  that  the 
instrument  was  not  a  celestial  thing.  Was  that 
angelic  music  attributable  solely  to  a  feeling  of 
wounded  self-esteem  ?  The  singer  felt  nothing, 
he  was  no  more  thinking  of  the  religious  senti- 
ments, the  divine  images  which  he  created  in 
their  hearts,  than  the  violin  knows  what  Paga- 
nini  makes  it  say.  They  had  all  fancied  that 
they  saw  Venice  raising  her  shroud  and  singing 
herself,  yet  it  was  simply  a  matter  of  a  tenor's 
fiasco."     Most  operatic  music  is. 

The  theory   of   the   roulade    is    further    ex- 
plained :  — 

Capraja  is  intimate  with  a  musician  from  Cremona 
who  lives  in  the  Capello  palace  ;  this  musician  believes 
that  sound  encounters  within  us  a  substance  analogous 
to  that  which  is  engendered  by  the  phenomena  of 
light,  and  which  produces  ideas  in  us.  According  to 
him  man  has  keys  within,  which  sounds  affect,  and 
which  correspond  to  our  nerve  centres  from  which  our 
sensations  and  ideas  spring.  Capraja,  who  looks  upon 
the  arts  as  a  collection  of  the  means  whereby  man  can 
bring  external  nature  into  harmony  with  a  mysterious 
internal  nature,  which  he  calls  an  inward  life,  has 
adopted  the  idea  of  this  instrument  maker,  who  is  at 
176 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

this  moment  composing  an  opera.  Imagine  a  sublime 
creation  in  which  the  marvels  of  visible  creation  are 
reproduced  with  immeasurable  grandeur,  lightness, 
rapidity,  and  breadth,  in  which  the  sensations  are  infi- 
nite, and  to  which  certain  privileged  natures,  endowed 
with  a  divine  power,  can  penetrate  —  then  you  will 
have  an  idea  of  the  ecstatic  delights  of  which  Cataneo 
and  Capraja,  poets  in  their  own  eyes  only,  discoursed 
so  earnestly.  But  it  is  true  also  that  as  soon  as  a  man, 
in  the  sphere  of  moral  nature,  oversteps  the  limits  within 
which  plastic  works  are  produced  by  the  process  of 
imitation,  to  enter  into  the  kingdom,  wholly  spiritual, 
of  abstractions,  where  everything  is  viewed  in  its 
essence  and  in  the  omnipotence  of  results,  that  man  is 
no  longer  understood  by  ordinary  intellects. 

The  foregoing  paragraph,  rather  inflated  and 
tortuous  in  style,  was  thoroughly  disliked  by  the 
great  critic  Sainte-Beuve,  who  never  would  recog- 
nize the  great  genius  of  Balzac,  the  romantic 
rather  than  the  realist  in  this  book.  The  com- 
poser referred  to  must  be  Gambara,  for  Massi- 
milla  Doni,  after  the  death  of  the  Duke  of 
Cataneo,  weds  young  Varese  and  assists  the 
unfortunate  Gambara  in  Paris.  Massimilla 
Doni  was  finished  May  25,  1839.  Its  conclud- 
ing paragraph  is  a  masterpiece  of  irony.  After 
the  love  of  Varese  and  Massimilla  came  the 
usual  anti-climax.  Balzac  writes,  in  a  passage 
of  unexampled  splendor :  "  The  peris,  nymphs, 
fairies,  sylphs  of  the  olden  time,  the  muses  of 
Greece,  the  marble  Virgins  of  the  Certosa  of  Pavia, 
n  177 


OVERTONES 

the  Day  and  Night  of  Michael  Angelo,  the  little 
angels  that  Bellini  first  drew  at  the  foot  of  church 
paintings,  and  to  whom  Raphael  gave  such  divine 
form  at  the  foot  of  the  Vierge  au  donitaire, 
and  of  the  Madonna  freezing  at  Dresden  ; 
Orcagna's  captivating  maidens  in  the  Church 
of  Or  San  Michele  at  Florence,  the  heavenly 
choirs  on  the  tomb  of  St.  Sebald  at  Nuremberg, 
several  Virgins  in  the  Duomo  at  Milan,  the 
hordes  of  a  hundred  Gothic  cathedrals,  the 
whole  nation  of  figures  who  ruin  their  shapes  to 
come  to  you,  O  all-embracing  artists  —  all  these 
angelic  incorporeal  maidens  rushed  to  Massi- 
milla's  bed  and  wept  there." 

Richard  Wagner  might  have  been  a  Gam- 
bara ;  and  mark  how  Balzac  treats  the  vibra- 
tory theory  of  sound,  when  it  was  practically 
unknown.  Where  did  he  gather  his  wisdom  ? 
Another  story  of  his,  hitherto  untranslated, 
Sarrasin,  will  not  bear  recounting.  Its  psy- 
chology is  morbid ;  yet  it  is  stamped  with 
probability.  The  great  male  soprano  Farinelli 
could  have  been  the  hero.  Nevertheless,  the 
tale  is  not  a  pleasant  one.  George  Moore  elo- 
quently describes  how,  in  chase  of  the  exotic,  he 
pursued  certain  books,  like  a  pike  after  min- 
nows, along  the  quays  of  Paris.  And  like  a 
pike  he  rudely  knocked  his  nose  one  day  against 
the  bottom.  The  real  lover  of  Balzac,  pike-like, 
accepts  Sarrasin,  just  as  he  accepts  Seraphita. 
They  are  many  octaves  apart,  yet  both  sound  a 
178 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

distinct  note  in  the  scale  of  this  great  human 
symphony.  However,  Sarrasin  is  but  semi- 
musical,  so  need  not  be  discussed  here. 

"  O  mighty  poet !  Thy  works  are  not  as 
other  men's,  simply  and  merely  great  works  of 
art;  but  are  also  like  the  phenomena  of  nature, 
like  the  sun,  the  sea,  the  stars,  and  the  flowers ; 
like  frost  and  snow,  rain  and  dew,  hail-storm 
and  thunder,  which  are  to  be  studied  with  en- 
tire submission  of  our  own  faculties,  and  in  the 
perfect  faith  that  in  them  there  can  be  no  too 
much  or  too  little,  nothing  useless  or  inert ;  that 
the  further  we  press  in  our  discoveries,  the 
more  we  shall  see  proofs  of  design  and  self- 
supporting  arrangement  where  the  careless  eye 
had  seen  nothing  but  accident!  " 

Thomas  De  Quincey,  master  of  the  sonorous 
singing  word,  wrote  this  —  he  meant  Shake- 
speare. It  will  also  fit  Balzac.  And  I  know 
of  no  other  name  except  Balzac's,  that  I  dare 
bracket  with  Shakespeare's  except  Beethoven's. 

ALPHONSE   DAUDET 

"The  entire  work  of  Balzac  pulsates  with  a 
fever  of  discovery  and  of  impromptu."  It  was 
Alphonse  Daudet,  the  little  David  of  the  south, 
with  "the  head  of  an  Arabian  Christ,"  who 
wrote  that  sentence,  a  sentence  that  might  be 
aptly  fitted  to  his  own  case.  Daudet  loved 
Balzac,  loved  Beethoven,  and  —  this  may  be  a 
179 


OVERTONES 

surprise  for  some  —  loved  Wagner,  knew  Wag- 
ner. Why  not  ?  Style  for  him  was  a  question 
of  intensity,  and  what  is  Wagner  if  not  intense  ? 
And  Daudet  was  no  mean  critic.  He  could 
recognize  the  unchanging  moi  of  Hugo,  and  the 
miraculous  gift  of  transforming  himself  that 
gave  to  Balzac  the  power  of  multitudinous  crea- 
tion. He  could  speak  of  Georges  Rodenbach  as 
"  the  most  exquisite  and  refined  of  poets  and 
prose  writers,  moist  and  dripping  with  his  Flem- 
ish fogs,  a  writer  whose  sentence  has  the  ten- 
der effect  of  belfries  against  the  sky  and  the 
soft  golden  hue  of  reliquaries  and  stained 
glass  windows."  Friedrich  Nietzsche  was  "that 
admirable  writer  with  a  surprising  power  for 
destruction  "  ;  while  in  Ibsen's  Wild  Duck  he 
found  "the  india-rubber  laugh,  the  laugh  of 
Voltaire  congealed  by  Pomeranian  sleet."  The 
reading  of  Dostoievsky's  Crime  and  Punish- 
ment was  a  "  crisis  of  his  mind  "  ;  and  for  Tol- 
stoy he  always  entertained  a  warm  admiration. 
After  Turgenieff  died  some  alleged  souvenirs 
of  his  were  published  and  gave  Daudet  exquis- 
ite unhappiness,  for  he  had  loved  the  man  and 
extolled  the  artist.  M.  Halperine-Kaminsky 
cleared  up  the  mystery  by  proving  that  Tur- 
genieff had  never  written  the  offensive  para- 
graphs. They  were  really  not  of  serious  import, 
consisting  of  several  free  criticisms  about  the 
realistic  group  to  which  Daudet  belonged.  As  I 
remember,  Turgenieff  is  reported  to  have  said  that 
i  So 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

much  of  the  work  of  Daudet,  the  de  Goncourts, 
Zola,  and  a  few  others  smelt  of  the  lamp.  Yet 
this  simple  phrase  caused  Daudet  pain,  for  he 
prided  himself  on  his  spontaneity  of  style,  his 
freedom  from  use  of  the  file.  Possibly,  Turge- 
nieff  —  and  this  is  pure  conjecture  on  my  part  — 
knew  of  Daudet's  opinions  touching  upon  what 
he  called  "  Russian  pity,  which  is  limited  to 
criminals  and  low  women."  He  named  it  a 
"  sentimental  monstrosity,"  and  for  that  reason 
depreciated  the  "  rousing  fanaticism  and  actual 
hallucinations  of  the  Russian  Dickens"  —  Dos- 
toievsky. 

But  Alphonse  Daudet  and  music  !  His  son, 
Leon,  tells  us  much  in  his  filial  memoirs.  "  His 
ear,"  says  this  pious  and  admirable  biographer, 
"  had  a  delicacy  and  correctness  most  exquisite. 
Thence  came  his  passion  for  music,  which  was 
made  an  aid  and  assistance  to  his  labors.  He 
sits  at  his  table  in  his  working  room.  My 
mother  is  at  the  piano  in  the  next  room,  and 
the  music  of  Mozart,  Beethoven,  Schumann,  or 
Schubert  follows,  one  after  the  other,  and  ex- 
cites or  calms  the  imagination  of  the  writer. 
'  Music  is  another  planet.'  '  I  adore  all  music, 
the  commonest  as  well  as  the  loftiest.'  But  no 
man  could  analyze  and  understand  better  the 
masters  of  harmony,  no  man  lauded  the  genius 
of  Wagner  in  more  splendid  terms  or  more  brill- 
iant images  :  '  The  conquest  by  Wagner  and  the 
philosophers.'  " 

181 


OVERTONES 

Daudet  often  came  home  with  wet  eyes  after 
a  concert,  and  we  are  told  that  his  voice  was 
delicate  and  penetrating  when  he  hummed  the 
tunes  of  Provence.  His  intimate  musical  friends 
were  Raoul  Pugno,  the  pianist,  Bizet,  and  Mas- 
senet. In  later  years  Hahn,  the  "  little  Hahn," 
a  composer  of  songs,  often  visited  him,  and  he 
dearly  loved  the  mad  music  of  the  Hungarian 
gypsy  orchestras.  We  all  recall  his  fondness 
for  the  pastoral  pipe,  and  Valmafour,  that  thrice 
unhappy  Valmafour  urged  in  the  pursuit  of 
a  hopeless  fantastic  love  by  an  avaricious 
sister !  I  have  often  wondered  who  sat  for  the 
portrait  of  De  Potter  in  Sapho.  It  was  possi- 
bly a  composite  of  Gounod,  Bizet,  and  Massenet, 
though  the  figure  of  the  love-stricken  com- 
poser seems  to  fit  Gounod  better  than  the 
others  —  Gounod  at  the  epoch  of  Georgiana 
Weldon. 

That  Daudet's  ear  for  verbal  harmonies  was 
of  the  finest  there  can  be  no  doubt,  after  read- 
ing this  :  "  It  seems  that  the  phrase,  as  Chateau- 
briand uses  it,  has  preserved  the  rhythm  and 
movement  of  the  sea ;  the  rush  of  his  crises 
comes  from  the  farthest  line  of  the  horizon  ; 
their  return  is  broad,  quiet,  majestic.  Another 
example  of  sensitiveness  to  the  period  in  writ- 
ing, Gustave  Flaubert,  is  the  only  one  present- 
ing, in  the  same  degree  as  Chateaubriand,  that 
verbal  wealth  which  gives  a  sensuous  satisfac- 
tion to  one's  mind  when  reading." 
182 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

Of  Wagner  he  said  :  — 

Wagner  was  a  phenomenon  in  this  century  just 
as  he  will  be  one  in  the  time  to  come,  and  no  one 
is  more  fruitful  than  he  in  remarks  of  every  sort. 
.  .  .  He  was  a  man  belonging  to  another  age. 
Nevertheless,  he  found  a  way  to  our  nerves  and  our 
brains  far  more  easily  than  one  would  have  thought. 
If  imagination  has  representatives,  he  was  one  of  the 
giants.  A  Northern  imagination,  it  is  true,  on  which 
all  the  beauties  and  faults  of  the  North  have  left 
their  impress.  He  insists,  he  insists  with  violence 
and  tenacity,  he  insists  so  pitilessly !  He  is  afraid 
that  we  haven't  understood.  That  language  of 
motives  which  he  has  imagined,  and  of  which  he 
makes  such  magnificent  use,  has  the  fault  of  leaving 
us  very  often  with  an  impression  of  weariness.  .  .  . 
Still,  it  was  absolutely  necessary  for  him  to  invent 
that  system  of  motives.  .  .  .  His  characters  seem 
clothed  in  sound.  ...  In  Richard  Wagner  the 
imagination  is  so  representative  and  violent  that  it 
saturates  his  work  to  overflowing  with  all  the  sounds 
of  nature  and  leaves  a  limited  space  for  the  episodes. 
The  passion  between  Tristan  and  Isolde  plunges  into 
the  tumult  of  the  ocean  which  overwhelms  it ;  then 
it  appears  on  the  surface,  then  it  plunges  under 
again.  One  invincible  power  raises  the  waves  and 
the  souls  by  a  single  movement.  In  the  poem, 
water,  fire,  the  woods,  the  blossoming  and  mystic 
meadow,  the  holy  spot  become  the  more  powerful 
characters.  In  this  paganism  of  to-day  all  nature 
has  become  divine. 

Wagner's    pantheism    has    never   been   suffi- 
183 


OVERTONES 

ciently  realized.  For  me  his  dramas  deal  with 
the  elemental  forces,  rather  than  with  men  and 
women.  Daudet  evidently  recognized  this  fact. 
Wagner  was  a  pagan.  The  romancer  says : 
"  Your  generation  is  accustomed  to  these  splen- 
dors, this  torrent  of  heroism  and  life,  but  you 
cannot  present  to  your  fancy  the  impression 
which  that  music  exercised  on  men  of  my  age. 
.  .  .  There  is  everything  in  Wagner.  .  .  . 
Turning  his  face  toward  Gayety  he  wrote  the 
Meistersinger;  turning  toward  Pain,  Love,  Death, 
the  Mutter  of  Goethe,  he  wrote  Tristan  und  Isolde. 
He  made  use  of  the  entire  human  pianoforte,  and 
the  entire  superhuman  pianoforte.  Cries,  tears, 
the  distortion  of  despair,  the  trickling  of  water 
over  rocks,  the  sough  of  the  wind  in  the  trees, 
frightful  remorse,  the  song  of  the  shepherd  and 
the  trumpets  of  war  —  his  tremendous  imagina- 
tion is  always  at  white  heat,  and  always  ready." 
Daudet  wisely  refuses  to  discuss  Wagner's 
methods :  — 

Let  his  methods  remain  in  the  dark  like  his 
orchestra.  .  .  .  That  imagination  of  his,  feverish 
and  excessive,  has  not  only  renovated  music,  but  has 
also  overwhelmed  poetry  and  philosophy.  Although 
theories  disquiet  me,  still  I  feel  them  trembling  in 
Wagner  behind  each  one  of  his  heroes.  The  gods 
talk  of  their  destiny  and  of  the  conflict  of  that  des- 
tiny with  the  destiny  of  men  ;  they  talk  of  ancient 
Fate  in  a  way  that  is  sometimes  obscure,  but  with 
a  rush  and  a  go  that  make  one  forget  to  question 
184 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

them.  It  is  the  famous  wall  of  the  L^gende  des 
Siecles,  crowded  with  the  tubas  and  the  trumpets  of 
Sachs,  tumultuous  and  glittering  in  their  mass. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  Wagner  desired  to  have 
characters  of  a  size  suited  to  their  surroundings, 
and  that  one  would  feel  uncomfortable  while  consid- 
ering ordinary  men  who  should  be  victims  of  the 
Ocean  of  Tristan  or  of  the  Forest  of  Siegfried. 
What  difference  does  it  make  ?  He  succeeds  in 
moving  us  with  these  superterrestrial  passions.  In 
Tristan  humanity  plays  a  larger  part.  These  are 
our  own  wounds  which  are  bleeding  in  the  flesh  of 
the  lovers,  wounds  that  the  sacred  spear,  which  the 
hero  brings  back  with  him,  shall  never  heal. 

It  will  be  seen  that  these  are  the  utterances 
of  a  man  who  has  pondered  music  as  well  as 
felt  it  deeply.  He  knew  Wagner,  and  was  a 
welcome  visitor  at  Wahnfried.  "  Daudet  pleases 
me  much,"  Wagner  once  said.  The  openly 
expressed  admiration  of  this  cultured  French- 
man must  have  flattered  the  composer  greatly. 
Because  Daudet  admired  Wagner,  his  percep- 
tion of  Beethoven's  greatness  was  not  blurred. 
He  puts  the  case  succinctly  :  "  It  were  better  to 
say  that  the  masterpiece  by  Beethoven  being 
more  concentrated  and  closely  woven  makes  a 
total  impression  upon  you  in  a  much  shorter 
time  than  does  a  drama  with  its  necessary  stops 
and  changes  of  scenery  and  delays  for  explana- 
tion." This  in  answer  to  his  son  Leon,  who 
had  asserted  that  the  emotions  aroused  by  a  Bee- 
185 


OVERTONES 

thoven  symphony  include  "  a  deeper  and  rarer 
quality  "  than  those  evoked  by  the  Ring. 

The  elder  Daudet  finds  that  Wagner  is  satu- 
rated by  nature  and  nature's  sounds  :  — 

His  orchestral  parts  cradle  and  swing  me  to  and  fro. 
His  gentleness  and  power  cause  me  to  pass  within  a 
few  hours  through  the  most  powerful  emotions  —  emo- 
tions, in  fact,  for  which  no  one  can  fail  to  be  grateful 
forever  to  the  man  who  has  excited  them,  because 
they  reveal  our  inner  depths  to  ourselves.  I  love  and 
admire  Beethoven  also  for  the  wide  and  peaceful  land- 
scapes which  he  knows  how  to  open  up  in  the  soul  of 
sound.  Italian  music  enchants  me,  and  in  Rossini  I 
experience  that  extraordinary  impression  of  melan- 
choly anguish  which  an  excess  of  life  gives  us.  There 
is  too  much  frenzy,  too  much  movement ;  it  is  as  if 
one  were  trying  to  escape  from  death.  I  adore  Men- 
delssohn and  his  delicious  pictures  of  nature  in  the 
Scotch  and  Italian  symphonies.  There  are  certain  hours 
toward  nightfall  when  the  soul  of  Schumann  torments 
me.  .  .  .  But  to  number  them  all  would  be  to  never 
end.  I  have  lived  through  the  power  of  music ;  I  am 
a  dweller  upon  its  planet. 

Now  all  this  is  quite  satisfying  when  one 
realizes  that  Daudet,  in  his  love  for  music,  steps 
out  of  the  French  literary  tradition.  French 
writers,  even  those  of  this  century,  have  never 
been  fanatics  for  music,  Stendhal  and  Baudelaire 
excepted  —  Baudelaire  who  discovered  Wagner 
to  France.  I  cannot  recommend  Stendhal  as  a 
musical  guide.  Chateaubriand,  Victor  Hugo, 
1 86 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO   LOVED    MUSIC 

Gautier,  Alfred  de  Vigny,  de  Musset,  Flaubert, 
Dumas  fils,  Zola,  the  de  Goncourts  —  the 
brothers  secretly  abominated  music  —  this  mixed 
company  was  not  fond  of  the  heavenly  maid. 
Catulle  Mendes  is  a  Wagnerian,  and  in  his 
evanescent  way  Paul  Verlaine  was  affected  by 
melody.  He  wrote  a  magnificent  and  subtle 
sonnet  on  Parsifal.  Perhaps  it  was  what  the  de- 
spiser  of  Kundry  stood  for  rather  than  Wagner's 
music  that  set  vibrating  the  verbal  magic  of 
this  Chopin  of  the  Gutter.  Villier  de  ITsle 
Adam  was  another  crazy  Wagnerian,  played 
excerpts  on  the  piano,  had  his  music  performed 
at  his  own  deathbed,  and  sketched  in  a  book  of 
his  the  figure  of  Liszt  as  Triboulet  Bonhomet. 
Huysmans,  of  Flemish  descent,  has  made  a  close 
study  of  church  music  and  the  old  ecclesiastical 
modes  in  En  Route  and  in  several  others  of 
his  remarkable  books.  The  younger  Parisian 
writers  are  generally  music  lovers. 

How  well  Daudet  understood  that  elusive 
quantity,  the  artistic  temperament,  may  be  seen 
*n  this  bit  of  analysis  :  "  Neither  sculptor,  nor 
painter  represents  anything  which  did  not  exist 
before  in  the  world.  It  is  somewhat  different 
in  regard  to  music.  But,  looking  at  things  a 
little  closer,  music  is  the  lofty  manifestation  of  a 
harmony,  the  models  for  which  exist  in  nature. 
Nevertheless  the  writer,  the  painter,  the  poet, 
the  sculptor,  and  the  musician,  whenever  their 
work  bears  them  honestly  along,  believe  honestly 
iS7 


OVERTONES 

that  they  are  adding  to  the  world  something 
which  did  not  exist  before  their  time.  Sublime 
illusion  !  " 

On  this  clear,  critical  note  let  us  leave  the 
always  delightful  writer,  the  once  charming 
man.  "  Oh,  Daudet,  c  est  dc  la  bouillabaisse  !  " 
cries  the  author  of  Evelyn  Innes.  Yes,  but  is 
not  la  bouillabaisse  a  fascinating  dish,  especially 
when  a  master  chef  has  prepared  it  ? 


GEORGE  MOORE 

I 

Evelyn  Innes 

There  must  be  a  beyond.  In  Wagner  there  is  none. 
He  is  too  perfect.  Never  since  the  world  began  did  an 
artist  realize  himself  so  perfectly.  He  achieved  all  he  de- 
sired, therefore  something  is  wanting.  —  George  Moore. 

At  last  a  novel  with  some  intelligent  criticism 
of  music  —  George  Moore's  Evelyn  Innes. 

For  years  I  have  browsed  amidst  the  herbage 
offered  by  writers  of  musical  fiction,  and  usually 
have  found  it  bitter  and  unprofitable.  We  all 
smile  now  at  the  inflated  sentimentalities  of 
Charles  Auchester,  and  shudder  at  the  mistakes 
of  the  literary  person  when  dealing  with  musical 
themes.  Jessie  Fothergill's  The  First  Violin  is 
very  pretty,  but  it  is  badly  written  and  reeks 
of  Teutonic  Schwann erei.  The  characters  arc 
1 88 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

the  conventional  puppets  of  fiction  armed  with 
a  conductor's  stick  and  violin  bow,  instead  of 
sword,  cloak,  and  dagger.  A  novel  dealing 
with  genuine  musical  figures  has  yet  to  be 
written,  so  George  Moore's  Evelyn  Innes  is  an 
attempt  in  the  right  direction.  The  book  is  full 
of  faults,  but  at  least  it  deals  sanely  with  music, 
and  contains  several  very  acute  criticisms  of 
Wagner's  music,  acute  without  being  too  liter- 
ary or  too  technical. 

Whenever  I  read  a  novel  by  George  Moore  I 
feel  like  dividing  the  English-speaking  world 
into  three  parts  :  those  who  read  Moore  and  like 
him — a  determined  and  growing  class ;  those  who 
read  him  and  hate  him  —  a  very  much  larger 
class ;  and  those  who  never  heard  of  him  —  to 
this  class  belong  the  admirers  of  Marie  Corelli, 
Hall  Caine,  and  Sienkiewicz.  Yet  for  certain 
young  men  every  stroke  of  his  pen  has  a  hieratic 
significance.  I  remember  well  when  the  Con- 
fessions of  a  Young  Man  appeared.  With  what 
eagerness  was  it  not  seized  upon  by  a  small 
section  of  the  community,  a  section  that  repre- 
sented the  vanguard  of  a  new  movement  and 
recognized  a  fellow-decadent.  George  Moore 
may  be  truthfully  called  the  first  of  the  English 
decadents  —  I  mean  the  Verlaine  crop  of  the 
early  eighties,  not  the  gifted  gang  that  painted 
and  sonneted  under  the  name  of  the  Pre- 
Raphaelitic  Brotherhood. 

It   was    George  Moore  who  first  brought  to 
189 


OVERTONES 

England's  shores  the  "  poisonous  honey  of 
France."  In  his  Confessions  were  criticisms  of 
acuity  and  several  positive  discoveries.  He  it 
was  who  introduced  Arthur  Rimbaud  and  Ver- 
laine,  Jules  Laforgue  and  Gustave  Kahn,  to  a 
public  that  speedily  forgot  them.  To  read  these 
Confessions  to-day  is  like  stirring  up  stale  musk. 
There  is  an  odd  comminglement  of  caviare  and 
perfume  in  the  book,  and  its  author  evidently 
had  more  to  say. 

He  said  it  in  A  Mummer's  Wife,  one  of  the 
strongest,  most  disagreeable  books  I  ever  read. 
But,  while  the  hands  were  Moore's,  the  voice 
was  Zola's.  Moore  has  always  been  the  victim 
of  methods.  He  has  dissected  Tolstoy,  Tur- 
genieff,  Flaubert,  Balzac,  and  the  de  Goncourts 
to  see  how  they  do  the  trick ;  and  as  he  pos- 
sesses in  a  rare  degree  the  mocking-bird  voice, 
his  various  books  were  at  first  echoes  of  his  pas- 
sionate delvings  in  the  minds  of  others.  A 
Mummer's  Wife  dealt  with  the  English  stage  — 
certain  phases  of  it.  It  was  Zola  Anglicized. 
Then  followed  the  trilogy  of  brutal  naturalistic 
novels,  Spring  Days,  A  Modern  Lover,  and 
Mike  Fletcher,  the  last  being  the  biggest.  The 
writer  exploited  to  the  full  his  love  for  what  he 
conceived  to  be  the  real,  and  there  are  certainly 
many  telling  passages  in  Mike  Fletcher.  To- 
day A  Modern  Lover  is  recognized  as  a  very 
truthful  study  of  artistic  London,  the  London 
that  paints  and  goes  to  picture  galleries.  The 
190 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

new  man  — -  he  was  very  new  then  to  the 
younger  men  —  had  the  gift  of  gripping  your 
hand  with  chilly,  withal  powerful,  fingers.  He 
forced  you  to  look  at  certain  surfaces  and  see 
them  the  way  he  saw  them.  Because  nature 
had  imposed  upon  him  restrictions,  he  strove 
earnestly  to  see  more  clearly,  and  by  dint  of 
hard  gazing  he  did  see,  and  saw  some  extraor- 
dinary things. 

Having  studied  Germinie  Lacerteux  until  he 
had  mastered  her,  George  Moore  transposed 
her  into  the  key  of  Fielding.  His  Esther 
Waters,  by  far  simpler  and  healthier  than  the 
rest,  is  the  Goncourts'  gutter-martyr,  Germinie 
Lacerteux,  done  into  English.  But  it  is  admi- 
rably done,  and  the  paraphrase  became  known 
to  the  novel-reading  world.  There  was  a  brief 
silence,  and  Celibates  appeared.  And  there 
were  things  performed  within  its  pages  that  sent 
shivers  to  your  stomach.  An  outrageous  theme 
was  fashioned  superbly.  One  story  was  a  re- 
currence to  Moore's  favorite  subject,  the  Roman 
Catholic  church.  Whether  he  is  a  Catholic  or 
not,  I  cannot  say,  but  the  church  literally  ob- 
sesses him.  Her  ritual  dominates  his  vision, 
and,  like  a  sickly  woman,  he  loves  to  finger  the 
georgeous  livery  of  the  Lord.  He  continually 
returns  to  this  topic.  He  is  exercised,  almost 
haunted,  by  the  notion  that  outside  of  her  pale 
salvation  is  impossible.  "  What  if  this  be  true?" 
cries  George  Moore,  as  he  arises  from  his  mid- 
191 


OVERTONES 

night  bed,  fearing  the  dark  and  looking  for  some 
sign  of  a  dawn !  I  suppose,  being  a  product  of 
our  times,  he  enjoys  this  acrobatic  flirting  and 
balancing  on  the  rope  of  faith  swung  over  the 
chasm  of  doubt  and  despair.  Religion  is  one  of 
his  leading  motives,  art  the  other. 

The  new  story  deals  with  several  episodes  in 
the  life  of  a  singer.  She  is  the  daughter  of  a 
devotee  of  archaic  music  and  archaic  instru- 
ments. She  has  a  voice,  but  her  father  is  so 
absorbed  in  the  revival  of  Palestrina,  of  Vittoria, 
of  old  English  writers,  of  the  Plain  Chant,  that 
he  neglects  the  girl's  vocal  possibilities.  She 
plays  the  viola  da  gamba  and  sings  at  sight. 
Her  mother  was  a  celebrated  operatic  singer,  of 
chaste  life  and  coloratura  tastes.  She  died  be- 
fore the  girl  was  developed.  The  dreamy  father, 
the  high-strung,  ambitious  girl,  a  dreary  home 
at  Dulwich,  near  London,  and  a  rich  baronet  of 
musical  tastes,  crazy  for  notoriety  in  London 
musical  life, —  and  you  may  imagine  the  rest. 

Evelyn  goes  to  Paris  with  him  —  and  with  a 
certain  Lady  Duckle  as  a  chaperon.  The  scene 
at  Marchesi's  —  for  of  course  Madame  Savelli 
is  Marchesi — is  capitally  done,  and  there  is  a 
Henry  James  lightness  of  touch  and  humor  in 
the  description  of  Lady  Duckle  and  her  dislike 
of  Wagner's  music. 

"  No,  my  dear  Owen,"  she  cried,  "  I  am  not  a 
heretic,  for  I  recognize  the  greatness  of  the 
music,  and  I  could  hear  it  with  pleasure  if  it 
192 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

were  confined  to  the  orchestra;  but  I  can  find 
no  pleasure  in  listening  to  a  voice  trying  to  ac- 
company a  hundred  instruments.  I  heard  Lo- 
hengrin last  season.  I  was  in  Mrs.  Ayre's  box 
—  a  charming  woman  — her  husband  is  an  Amer- 
ican, but  he  never  comes  to  London.  I  pre- 
sented her  at  the  last  Drawing  Room.  She  had 
a  supper  party  afterward,  and  when  she  asked 
me  what  I'd  have  to  eat,  I  said,  '  Nothing  with 
wings!  .  .  .     Oh,  that  Swan!'  " 

Now,  this  is  distinctly  witty,  and  it  is  a  pity 
that  we  get  only  a  mere  sketch  of  this  chatty 
body. 

Without  explaining  the  processes,  Evelyn  be- 
comes a  great  singer,  a  great  interpreter  of 
Wagner;  and  it  is  precisely  this  hiatus  that  de- 
prives me  of  much  pleasure.  I  dislike  these 
persons  in  fiction  who  have  become  full-fledged 
artists  at  the  turning  of  a  page.  Mr.  Moore  was 
treading  upon  dangerous  ground,  and  he  knew 
it;  so  he  wisely  omitted  the  study  years.  Evelyn, 
whose  character  shows  little  growth,  conquers 
London,  and  at  last  goes  to  her  father  to  ask  his 
pardon.  This  episode  is  the  strongest  and  most 
original  in  the  book.  Indeed,  I  cannot  recollect 
anything  in  English  fiction  like  it.  She  falls  at 
his  feet  and  is  Brtinnhilde  kneeling  to  Wotan. 
As  she  phrases  her  petition  for  pardon  she  acts, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  the  third  act  of 
Die  Walkiire  :  "War  es  so  schmahlich?"  she 
mentally  implores,  and  the  simple  instrument- 
°  193 


OVERTONES 

maker  is  vanquished.  It  is  very  subtle,  and  the 
dual  nature  of  the  lyric  artist  is  clearly  indicated. 
But  such  a  father,  such  a  daughter !  If  you 
were  to  ask  me  frankly  if  a  girl  could  sacrifice 
everything  for  art  I  would  as  frankly  reply,  Yes; 
lots  of  them  have.  I  have  met  a  dozen  myself. 
Moore  does  not  believe  that  the  moral  sense  can 
flourish  in  an  artistic  atmosphere.  Perhaps  he 
is  right.  Evelyn  is  dissatisfied  with  success. 
Her  nature  is  too  complex  to  find  gratification 
in  the  society  of  Sir  Owen  Asher.  A  new  man 
looms  up.  He  is  dark,  has  teeth,  is  a  mystic,  a 
Roscicrucian,  perhaps  a  diabolist.  He  is  a  Celt 
and  is  composing  to  a  Celtic  legend  a  great 
music-drama ;  his  musical  forms  are  antique, 
and  he  wins  Evelyn,  after  the  first  performance 
of  Isolde.  This  scene  caused  all  the  bellboys 
of  literature  to  cry  "horrors!  "  I  confess,  how- 
ever, that  the  second  love  is  incomprehensible. 
It  is  entered  into  in  too  cold-blooded  a  manner. 
She  becomes  still  more  dissatisfied,  and  after 
a  week  of  insomnia  her  early  religious  beliefs 
get  the  uppermost,  and  she  goes  to  confession. 
But  you  feel  that  she  has  only  met  a  third  will 
stronger  than  her  own.  A  Monsignor  Mostyn, 
the  best  male  portrait  of  the  book,  forces  her 
to  bend  her  knee  to  God,  and  she  goes  into  con- 
ventual retreat.  We  get  a  few  closing  chapters 
— dreary  ones — devoted  to  convent  life,  and 
then  Evelyn  goes  forth  once  more  into  the 
world. 

194 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

Her  character  is  exceedingly  well  drawn,  al- 
though I  must  protest  against  the  overloading 
of  page  after  page  with  elaborate  psychologizing. 
Moore  has  deserted  the  brutal  simplicities  of  his 
earlier  manner  for  a  Bourget-like  shovelling  of 
arid  psychical  details  upon  your  wearied  brain. 
The  story  becomes  hazy,  the  main  figure  nebu- 
lous. At  every  step  in  the  latter  half  of  the  book 
I  detect  Joris  Karel  Huysmans  and  his  En  Route. 
Evelyn  Innes  becomes  a  feminine  Durtal,  sick 
of  life,  afraid  of  God.  There  is  too  much  pad- 
ding in  the  shape  of  discussions  about  early 
church  music  —  more  Huysmans!  Huysmans's 
practice  of  cataloguing  is  very  monotonous. 
Yet  it  is  the  best  thing  in  the  way  of  a  literary 
performance  that  George  Moore  has  accom- 
plished. The  style  is  decomposed,  but  it  is 
melodious,  flexible,  smooth,  and  felicitous.  One 
can  see  that  he  knows  his  Pater. 

Mr.  Moore  had  used  to  advantage  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  London  musical  set.  Mr.  Arnold 
Dolmetsch  may  have  sat  for  a  portrait  of 
Evelyn's  father.  Mr.  Dolmetsch  is  a  player 
on  the  harpsichord  and  spinet.  But  who  is 
Evelyn  Innes  ?  That  is  a  dangerous  question. 
Possibly  she  is  a  composite  of  Melba,  Calv6, 
Eames,  and  Nordica.  Oddly  enough,  she  gets 
a  tiara,  presented  to  her  by  the  subscribers  of 
the  opera  at  New  York  !  Of  course  this  points 
to  Nordica,  but  Nordica  could  never  read  music 
at  sight, —  you  remember  the  one  thousand  piano 
195 


OVERTONES 

rehearsals  for  Tristan, —  and  so  that  clew  is  mis- 
leading. Perhaps  the  author  may  enlighten  the 
musical  world  some  day.  Lady  Grimalkin  is 
certainly  intended  for  Lady  de  Grey. 

Sir  Owen  Asher — he  may  be  one  side  of  George 
Moore  himself  —  is  well  painted  in  the  begin- 
ning, but  the  colors  soon  fade.  He  is  a  bore, 
with  his  agnosticism,  his  vanity,  and  his  lack  of 
backbone.  He  treated  Evelyn  too  delicately. 
A  lusty  reproof  is  what  the  young  woman  most 
needed.  Her  church ly,  sentimental  vaporings 
would  then  have  been  dissipated,  and  she  might 
have  thrown  a  clock  at  her  admirer's  head. 
Such  things  have  been  known  to  happen  in  the 
life  of  a  prima  donna.  Sir  Owen  starts  a  Wag- 
nerian Review.  Could  Mr.  Moore  have  meant 
the  Earl  of  Dysart  ?  Ulick  Dean  is  said  to  be 
drawn  partially  from  Yeats,  the  mystic ;  but 
the  music  criticism  sounds  to  me  very  like  the 
doughty  Runciman's.  There  is  a  manager  with 
a  toothache,  who  is  almost  funny,  and  there  is 
a  rehearsal  of  Tannhauser,  in  which  the  ques- 
tion of  cuts  is  discussed.  Here  is  a  sentence 
that  reveals  the  depth  of  Mr.  Moore's  knowl- 
edge of  music  :  — 

"  According  to  Mr.  Innes,  Bach  was  the  last 
composer  who  had  distinguished  between  A 
sharp  and  B  flat.  The  very  principle  of  Wag- 
ner's music  is  the  identification  of  the  two 
notes."  Why  ?  In  the  name  of  the  Chromatic 
Fantasia,  why? 

196 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

I  confess  I  am  rather  tired  of  convent  scenes. 
The  best  I  ever  read  in  latter-day  novels  is  in 
Mathilde  Serao's  Fantasy.  Mrs.  Craigie,  in 
The  Schools  for  Saints,  "  does  "  a  convent,  and 
now  Moore.  The  Roman  Catholic  problem, 
too,  is  overdone.  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  in 
her  polemical  pamphlet  which  she  calls  a  novel, 
Helbeck  of  Bannisdale,  indulges  in  numerous 
speculations  of  the  sort.  George  Moore  loves 
the  rich  trappings  and  the  pomp  of  ceremonial 
in  the  church.  But  its  iteration  is  an  artistic 
mistake.  Indeed,  his  book  goes  off  into  mid- 
air in  the  latter  half.  The  first  is  fascinating. 
The  discussion  of  the  various  schools  of  singing 
is  valuable,  and  while  at  no  place  does  he  ex- 
hibit the  marvellous  virtuosity  displayed  by 
d'Annunzio  in  his  exposition  of  Tristan  and 
Isolde,  there  are  many  jewelled  pages  of  descrip- 
tive writing.  The  book  is  permeated  with  all 
manners  of  pessimism  from  Omar  to  Schopen- 
hauer, and  life  is  discussed  from  the  viewpoints 
of  the  ascetic  and  the  epicurean. 

Mr.  Moore  is  an  artist.  His  vision  is  just, 
and  he  is  a  better  workman  than  he  was ;  his 
sense  of  form  is  matured,  although  his  faults 
of  construction  are  easily  detected.  He  has 
caught  the  right  atmosphere ;  he  is  still  master 
of  moods,  and  he  has  attempted  and  nearly 
succeeded  in  spilling  out  the  soul  of  a  singer 
for  our  inspection, — the  soul  of  the  selfish, 
ambitious  prima  donna,  for  there  is  no  denying 
197 


OVERTONES 

that  Evelyn,  despite  her  tender  conscience, 
was  selfish  and  a  fascinating  creature,  mastered 
by  every  passing  whim,  and  a  woman  utterly 
incapable  of  developing  mentally  without  mas- 
culine assistance.  Mr.  Moore,  then,  has  given 
us  the  type  of  the  opera  singer,  and  I  forgive 
him  pages  of  solemn-gaited  writing.  Alas  !  that 
it  should  be  as  he  writes.  But  it  is.  He  says 
some  things  that  go  very  deep,  and  there  are 
many  exquisite  touches. 

This  novelist's  attitude  towards  Wagner's 
music  is  well  expressed  in  John  Norton,  the 
second  of  the  three  tales  in  that  uncommonly 
strong  book  called  Celibates.  Here  is  another 
self-revelation  :  — 

Wagner  reminds  me  of  a  Turk  lying  amid  the 
houris  promised  by  the  Prophet  to  the  Faithful  — 
eyes  incensed  by  kohl,  lips  and  almond  nails  in- 
carnadine, the  languor  of  falling  hair  and  the  lan- 
guor of  scent  burning  in  silver  dishes,  and  all 
around  subdued  color,  embroidered  stuffs,  bronze 
lamps  traced  with  inscrutable  designs.  Never  a 
breath  of  pure  air,  not  even  when  the  scene  changes 
to  the  terrace  overlooking  the  dark  river,  .  .  .  min- 
arets and  the  dome  reflected  in  the  tide  and  in  a 
sullen  sky,  reaching  almost  to  the  earth,  the  dome 
and  behind  the  dome  a  yellow  moon  —  a  carven 
moon,  without  faintest  aureole,  a  voluptuous  moon, 
mysteriously  marked,  a  moon  like  a  creole,  her  hand 
upon  the  circle  of  her  breast ;  and  through  the  tor- 
rid twilight  of  the  garden  the  sound  of  fountains, 
198 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

like  flutes  far  away,  breathing  to  the  sky  the  sor- 
row of  the  water-lilies.  And  in  the  dusky  foliage, 
in  which  a  blue  and  orange  evening  dies,  gleams  the 
color  of  fruit  —  dun-colored  bananas,  purple  and  yel- 
low grapes,  the  desert  scent  of  dates,  the  motley 
morbidity  of  figs,  the  passion  of  red  pomegranates, 
shining  like  stars,  through  a  flutter  of  leaves,  where 
the  light  makes  a  secret  way.  And  through  all  the 
color  and  perfume  of  twilight,  of  fruit,  of  flowers, 
cometh  the  maddening  murmur  of  fountains.  At 
last  the  silence  is  broken  by  the  thud  of  an  over-ripe 
fruit  that  has  suddenly  broken  from  its  stalk.  .  .  . 
Now  I  am  alive  to  the  music,  all  has  ceased  but  it ; 
I  am  conscious  of  nothing  else.  Now  it  has  got  me  ; 
I  am  in  its  power ;  I  am  as  a  trembling  prey  held  in 
the  teeth  and  claws  of  a  wild  animal.  The  music 
creeps  and  catches,  and  with  cruel  claws  and  amo- 
rous tongue  it  feeds  upon  my  flesh  ;  my  blood  is 
drunken,  and,  losing  grasp  upon  my  suborned  soul, 
...  I  tremble,  I  expire. 

II 

Sister  Teresa 

Brainstuffis  not  lean  stuff  ;  the  brainstuff  of  fiction  is 
internal  history,  and  to  suppose  it  dull  is  the  profoundest 
of  errors.  —  George  Meredith. 

What  makes  Moore's  case  so  peculiarly  his 
own  is  his  unlikeness  to  our  preconceived  notion 
of  an  Irishman.  No  man  of  genius  resembles 
his  countrymen  ;  so  we  find  Burke,  Swift,  George 
Moore,  with  few  of  the  characteristics  ascribed 
199 


OVERTONES 

to  Irishmen  and  wits.  They  were  and  are  not 
jolly  world  lovers,  rollicking  sports  of  the  sort 
Lever  loved  to  paint.  Tom  Moore  and  his  rose- 
water  poetry,  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan  and 
his  glossy  smartness,  hit  the  popular  notion 
of  what  an  Irish  poet,  playwright,  and  man  of 
letters  should  be. 

Now  George  Moore  is  far  from  being  an  Irish- 
man in  that  sense  —  this  prose  poet  who  is  at  once 
mystical  and  gross.  Yet  he  is  a  Celt,  and  lately 
he  has  developed  a  restless  spirit,  a  desire  to 
flee  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  his  haunts.  It  is  the 
"homing"  instinct  of  the  Celt  —  after  forty 
years  of  age  men  of  talent  return  to  their  tribe. 
And  Mr.  Moore  is  fast  becoming  an  Irishman 
among  Irishmen.  Here  is  the  newest  incarna- 
tion of  this  feminine  soul  —  perverse  and  femi- 
nine, he  admits  he  is  —  which,  waxlike,  takes  and 
retains  the  most  subtle  and  powerful  impressions. 
The  readers  of  his  early  books  knew  him  as  a 
Shelley  worshipper,  then  a  digger  among  the 
romantic  literature  of  1830,  finally  a  follower  of 
Zola.  So  after  Flowers  of  Passion  (1877)  we 
got  Pagan  Poems  (188 1),  and  with  A  Modern 
Lover  (1883)  began  his  prose  trilogy,  devoted 
to  the  young  man.  This  was  followed  in  1884 
by  A  Mummer's  Wife,  Literature  at  Nurse 
(1885),  A  Drama  in  Muslin  (1886),  Parnell  and 
His  Island  (1887),  A  Mere  Accident  (1887), 
Confessions  of  a  Young  Man  (1888),  Spring 
Days  (1888),  Mike  Fletcher  (1889),  Impressions 
200 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

and  Opinions  (1890),  Vain  Fortune  (1890),  Mod- 
ern Painting  (1893),  The  Strike  at  Arlingford, 
a  play  (1893),  Esther  Waters  (1894),  Celibates 
(1895),  Evelyn  Innes  (1898),  The  Bending  of 
the  Bough,  a  play  (1900).  He  also  collaborated 
in  1894  with  Mrs.  Craigie  in  a  little  comedy 
called  Journeys  End  in  Lovers'  Meeting,  which 
was  written  for  Ellen  Terry,  and  Unfilled  Fields 
(1903). 

Mr.  Moore  was  born  in  1857,  the  son  °f  tne 
late  George  Henry  Moore,  M.P.,  of  Moore  Hall, 
County  Mayo,  Ireland.  He  was  educated  at 
Oscott  College,  near  Birmingham,  and  studied 
art  in  Paris,  so  his  expatriation  was  practical  and 
complete.  He  once  hated  his  native  land  and 
hated  its  religion.  Yet  I  know  of  few  writers 
whose  books,  whose  mind,  are  so  tormented  by 
Catholicism.  He  may  insult  the  church  in  A 
Drama  in  Muslin  —  one  of  the  most  veracious 
documents  of  Irish  social  history  in  the  eighties 
—  and  through  the  mouth  of  Alice  Barton.  But, 
like  the  moth  and  the  flame,  he  ever  circles 
about  the  Roman  Catholic  religion.  It  would  be 
unfair  to  hold  a  man  responsible  for  the  utter- 
ances of  his  characters,  nevertheless  there  is  a 
peculiarly  personal  cadence  in  all  that  Mr. 
Moore  writes,  which  makes  his  problem,  like 
that  of  Huysmans,  a  fascinating  one.  The 
George  Moore  of  Mike  Fletcher  and  the  George 
Moore  of  Sister  Teresa  are  very  different  men. 
Mike  Fletcher,  for  me  the  first  virile  man  in 
201 


OVERTONES 

English  fiction  since  Tom  Jones,  may  please 
some  critics  more  than  Evelyn  Innes  turned 
nun,  for  of  Mike  you  could  not  say  in  Meredith's 
words :  "  Men  may  have  rounded  Seraglio 
Point ;  they  have  not  yet  doubled  Cape  Turk." 
Mike  never  rounded  Seraglio  Point ;  while  of 
Evelyn,  you  dimly  feel  that  she  is  always 
"  fiddling  harmonics  on  the  strings  of  sensu- 
alism." Yes,  George  Moore  is  returning  to  the 
tribe  ;  he  is  Irish  ;  he  is  almost  Roman  Catho- 
lic—  and  the  man  is  often  more  interesting 
than  his  books.  Not  to  know  them  all  is  to  miss 
the  history  of  artistic  London  during  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century. 

In  the  preface  of  the  English  edition  of  Sister 
Teresa  Mr.  Moore  writes:  — 

I  found  I  had  completed  a  great  pile  of  Ms.,  and 
one  day  it  occurred  to  me  to  consider  the  length  of 
this  Ms.  To  my  surprise  I  found  I  had  written  about 
150,000  words,  and  had  only  finished  the  first  half  of 
my  story.  I  explained  my  difficulties  to  my  publisher, 
suggesting  that  I  should  end  the  chapter  I  was  then 
writing  on  what  musicians  would  call  '  a  full  close,' 
and  that  half  the  story  should  be  published  under  the 
title  of  Evelyn  Innes  and  half  under  the  title  of  Sister 
Teresa.  My  publisher  consented,  frightened  at  the 
thought  of  a  novel  of  a  thousand  pages  —  300,000 
words.  The  story  has  not  been  altered,  but  the 
text  is  almost  entirely  new.  No  one,  perhaps,  has 
rewritten  a  book  so  completely.  I  am  aware  that  the 
alteration  of  a  published  text  is  deprecated  in  the 
202 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

press,  but  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why,  for  have 
not  Shakespeare  and  Balzac  and  Goethe  and  Wagner 
and  Fitzgerald  rewritten  their  works  ?  Among  my 
contemporaries,  George  Meredith  and  W.  B.  Yeats 
have  followed  the  example  of  their  illustrious  pred- 
ecessors. 

The  latter  half  of  the  book  is  by  no  means 
so  brilliant,  or  even  so  convincing,  as  the  first. 
But  then  its  psychology  is  much  finer,  and  it 
was  infinitely  harder  to  handle.  Evelyn  was 
bound  to  taste  convent  life.  Morbid,  fatigued 
by  Wagner  singing,  triumphs,  social  and  oper- 
atic, by  her  two  lovers,  her  stomach  deranged  by 
dyspepsia,  her  nerves  worn  to  an  irritable  thread 
by  insomnia  —  is  it  any  wonder  the  golden- 
haired  girl,  with  the  freckled  face,  regarded 
convent  life  as  a  green-blooming  oasis  in  a 
wilderness  of  lust,  vanity,  and  artificial  worldli- 
ness !  You  can  see  that  her  mother's  spirit 
grows  stronger  in  her  every  day,  that  mother 
with  the  cold  eyes  and  thin  lips  who  lost  her 
voice  so  early  in  a  great  career.  "  The  portrait 
of  our  father  or  our  mother  is  a  sort  of  crystal 
ball,  into  which  we  look  in  the  hope  of  discover- 
ing our  destiny."  Evelyn  was  tired  of  love, 
above  all  of  animal  love  which  dragged  her 
soul  from  God.  Ulick,  for  that  reason,  was 
more  grateful  to  her.  He  was  a  mystic,  with 
the  dog-cold  nose  of  mystics,  and  he  soothed 
Evelyn  when  Sir  Owen  had  ruffled  her  with  his 
203 


OVERTONES 

importunities,  with  his  materialism.  But  these 
two  men  soon  fade  after  the  first  hundred  pages 
of  the  new  story;  indeed,  they  are  lightly 
etched  in  at  the  best.  "  We  have  only  to  change 
our  ideas  to  change  our  friends.  Our  friends 
are  only  a  more  or  less  imperfect  embodiment 
of  our  ideas,"  says  Mr.  Moore.  The  feigned 
friendship  of  the  two  is  a  truly  Flaubertian 
note.  It  recalls  a  trait  of  Charles  Bovary.  The 
convent  of  the  Passionist  Sisters  at  Wimbledon, 
however,  is  the  glowing  core  of  this  remarkable 
tale.  For  nuns,  for  convents  and  monasteries, 
the  life  contemplative,  this  Irish  novelist  has 
always  had  a  deep  liking.  There  is  John  Nor- 
ton in  Celibates  and  there  is  Lily  Young,  who 
left  a  convent  for  Mike  Fletcher,  and  then 
we  have  Agnes  Lahens,  whose  only  happiness 
was  in  a  claustral  life.  At  one  time  I  believe 
that  this  writer  would  have  indorsed  Nietzsche's 
idea  of  a  monastery  for  freethinkers.  Didn't 
H.  G.  Wells  suggest  a  retreat  for  a  Huysmans 
sect  ?  Evelyn  Innes,  like  John  Norton,  dilly- 
dallied with  her  innermost  convictions.  It  was 
long  before  she  realized  that  faith  is  a  gift,  is  a 
special  talent,  which  must  be  cultivated  to  a 
perfect  flowering.  And  when  she  left  her 
lovers,  when  she  left  the  stage,  after  her  father 
died  in  Rome,  —  here  the  long  arm  of  coinci- 
dence is  rather  unpleasantly  visible,  —  when 
she  had  professed,  taken  the  veil,  and  became 
Sister  Teresa,  her  former  life  fell  away  from  her 
204 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO   LOVED    MUSIC 

like  water,  and  she  was  happy,  a  happy  bride  of 
Christ  —  until  the  honeymoon  was  over ;  for 
divine  nuptials  have  their  honeymoons,  their 
chilly  repulsions,  their  hours  and  days  of  indif- 
ference and  despair.  And  this  brings  us  to 
M.  Huysmans. 

Mr.  Peck,  in  his  admirable  estimate  of  George 
Moore,  —  in  The  Personal  Equation,  —  writes 
that  Moore  is  frankly  a  decadent,  frankly  a 
sensualist  of  the  type  of  Huysmans,  whom  he 
intensely  admires.  "A  page  of  Huysmans," 
exclaims  Moore,  "is  as  a  dose  of  opium,  a  glass 
of  some  exquisite  and  powerful  liqueur.  .  .  . 
Huysmans  goes  to  my  soul  like  a  gold  ornament 
of  Byzantine  workmanship.  There  is  in  his 
style  the  yearning  charm  of  arches,  a  sense  of 
ritual,  the  passion  of  the  mural,  of  the  window." 
And  Mr.  Peck  adds :  "  Mr.  Moore's  affinity 
with  Huysmans  does  not  go  further  than  a  cer- 
tain sensuous  sympathy.  He  could  never  follow 
him.  .  .  ."  But  he  has  followed  him,  followed 
En  Route;  Huysmans  has  not  only  gone  to  his 
soul,  but  to  his  pen.  He  once  wittily  wrote : 
"  Henry  James  went  to  France  and  read  Tur- 
genieff.  W.  D.  Howells  stayed  at  home  and 
read  Henry  James."  This  might  be  paraphrased 
thus  :  Joris  Karel  Huysmans,  that  unique  disciple 
of  Baudelaire,  went  to  La  Trappe  and  studied 
religion.  George  Moore,  that  most  plastic-souled 
Irishman,  stayed  at  home  and  studied  Huys- 
mans. This  is  the  precise  statement  of  a  truth. 
205 


OVERTONES 

Mr.  Moore  owes  as  much  to  Huysmans  for  his 
Sister  Teresa.  To  no  one  does  he  owe  Mildred 
Lawson.  She  is  as  much  George  Moore's  as 
L'Education  Sentimentale  is  truly  Flaubert's. 
I  do  not  know  of  her  counterpart  in  fiction ; 
like  Frederic  Moreau,  that  unheroic  hero,  she  is 
a  heroine  who  failed  from  sheer  lack  of  tempera- 
ment. And  her  story  is  one  of  the  best  stories 
in  the  language. 

But  with  Sister  Teresa  the  case  is  different. 
She  is  Huysmansized.  Yet  Mr.  Moore  has 
only  used  Huysmans  as  a  spring-board  —  to 
employ  a  favorite  expression  of  the  French 
writer — for  his  narration  of  Sister  Teresa's 
doings  in  conventual  seclusion.  He  knew,  of 
course,  that  he  could  never  hope  to  rival  Huys- 
mans's  matchless,  if  somewhat  florid  and  machic- 
olated,  style,  and  it  may  be  confessed  at  once 
that  Sister  Teresa  is  not  so  intense  or  so  sincere 
a  book  as  En  Route.  Nowhere,  despite  the 
exquisite  resignation  and  Mozartean  sweetness 
of  Mr.  Moore's  thirty-eighth  chapter,  is  there 
anything  that  approaches  the  power  of  the 
wonderful  first  chapter  in  En  Route,  with  its 
thundering  symphonic  description  of  the  sing- 
ing of  the  De  Profundis.  Nor  are  Teresa's 
raptures  and  agonies  to  be  compared  to  Durtal's 
in  that  awful  first  night  at  La  Trappe,  though 
the  Irish  writer  follows  the  French  one  closely 
enough.  But  Moore  is  tenderer,  more  poetic, 
than  Huysmans.  He  has  so  highly  individual- 
206 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

ized,  so  completely  transposed,  his  character, 
that  to  him  must  only  praise  be  awarded.  As 
Russell  Jacobus  writes,  in  The  Blessedness  of 
Egoism,  the  secret  of  Goethe's  self-culture  is 
"the  faculty  of  drawing  from  everything  —  ex- 
perience, books,  and  art  —  just  the  element 
required  at  that  stage  of  one's  growth,  and  the 
faculty  of  obtaining,  by  a  clairvoyant  instinct, 
the  experience,  the  book,  the  work  of  art  which 
contains  that  needed  element."  This  Mr.  Moore 
has  always  done  —  he  confesses  to  it,  to  the 
"echo  auguries"  of  his  young  manhood.  The 
color  of  his  mind  is  ever  changing.  It  often 
displays  the  reverberating  tints  of  a  flying-fish 
in  full  flight. 

And  his  art  has  benefited  by  his  defection 
from  Zola.  It  has  grown  purer,  more  intense. 
As  Huysmans  says  himself  in  La  Bas,  "  We 
must,  in  short,  follow  the  great  highway  so 
deeply  dug  out  by  Zola,  but  it  is  also  necessary 
to  trace  a  parallel  path  in  the  air,  another  road 
by  which  we  may  reach  the  Beyond  and  the 
Afterward,  to  achieve  thus,  in  one  word,  a  spirit- 
ualistic naturalism."  Huysmans  believes  Dos- 
toievsky comes  nearest  to  this  achievement  — 
as  Havelock  Ellis  remarks  —  Dostoievsky,  who 
was  once  described  by  Mr.  Moore  as  a  Gaboriau 
with  psychological  sauce.  But  at  that  time  he 
had  not  read  The  Idiot,  The  Gambler,  or  L' Ado- 
lescence. I  find  traces  of  the  Russian  novelists 
and  their  flawless  art  throughout  Sister  Teresa, 
207 


OVERTONES 

just  as  the  externals  of  the  book  —  of  Evelyn 
Innes  also  —  recall  Flaubert  in  L'Education 
Sentimentale.  There  are  many  half-cadences, 
chapters  closing  on  unresolved  harmonies,  many 
ellipses,  and  all  bathed  in  a  penetrating  yet  hazy 
atmosphere.  Yet  his  style  is  clear  and  rhyth- 
mic. Mr.  Moore  tells  of  subtle  things  in  a  simple 
manner  —  the  reverse  of  Henry  James's  method. 
The  character  drawing  is  no  longer  so  contra- 
puntal as  in  Evelyn  Innes.  But  the  convent 
sisters  are  delightful  —  the  Prioress,  Mother 
Hilda,  and  Sister  Mary  Saint  John.  It  would 
not  be  George  Moore,  however,  to  miss  a  tiny 
suggestion  of  the  morbid  — though  I  confess  he 
has  treated  the  episode  discreetly.  But  here 
again  has  Huysmans  anticipated  him,  and  also 
anticipated  him  in  Durtal's  revolt  against  the 
faith,  with  his  almost  uncontrollable  desire  to 
utter  blasphemies  in  the  presence  of  the  Blessed 
Sacrament.  With  a  master  hand — but  always 
the  hand  of  a  master  miniaturist  —  does  Mr. 
Moore  paint  cloistered  life,  its  futile  gossiping, 
little  failings,  heroic  sacrifices,  and  humming  air 
of  sanctity.  There  are  pages  in  the  book  that  I 
could  almost  swear  were  written  by  a  nun  —  so 
real,  so  intimate,  so  saturated,  are  they  with  the 
religious  atmosphere.  And  the  garden,  that 
nuns'  garden !  Whosoever  has  walked  in  the 
sequestered  garden  of  a  convent  can  never  quite 
lose  the  faint  sense  of  sweetness,  goodness, 
spirituality,  and  a  certain  soft  communion  with 
208 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

nature  which  modulate  into  the  very  speech 
and  rhythm  of  the  sisters.  All  this  atmosphere 
Mr.  Moore,  whose  receptivity  is  most  feminine, 
brings  into  his  perfumed  pages.  After  the 
fleshly  passion,  the  unrest,  of  Evelyn  Innes,  this 
book  has  a  consoling  music  of  its  own. 

It  was  after  the  convent  doors  closed  that  the 
real  struggles  of  the  singer  began.  Some  of 
them  have  considerable  vraisemblance,  some  of 
them  are  very  trivial.  The  letters  sent  to  Mon- 
signor  Mostyn,  for  example,  are  not  credible ; 
nor  are  Teresa's  revolt  and  subsequent  spiritual 
rebirth  made  quite  clear.  Perhaps  Mr.  Moore 
is  not  yet  so  strong  a  believer  as  Huysmans. 
His  words  do  not  carry  the  intense  conviction 
of  the  Fleming-Frenchman,  who  from  his  re- 
treat in  a  Benedictine  monastery  has  given  the 
world  a  vivid  and  edifying  account  of  St.  Lyd- 
wine  de  Schiedam,  that  blessed  Dutch  saint  he 
speaks  of  in  En  Route,  first  attacked  at  the 
time  of  the  plague  in  Holland.  "  Two  boils 
formed,  one  under  her  arm,  the  other  above  the 
heart.  '  Two  boils,  it  is  well,'  she  said  to  the 
Lord,  'but  three  would  be  better  in  honor  of 
the  Holy  Trinity,'  and  immediately  a  third 
pustule  broke  out  on  her  face."  This  extraor- 
dinary mystic  considered  herself  as  an  expiatory 
victim  for  all  the  sins  of  the  earth.  Her  suffer- 
ings were  finally  rewarded.  Like  John  Bunyan, 
she  died  a  "  comfortable  and  triumphant  death." 
A  writer  of  Huysmans's  magnificent  artistry, 
p  209 


OVERTONES 

who  can  thus  transform  himself  into  an  humble 
hagiographer,  must  indeed  have  forsworn  his 
ways  and  become  impregnated  by  faith. 

Mr.  Moore  does  not  succeed  in  arousing 
any  such  poignant  and  unpleasant  impressions. 
Notwithstanding  his  array  of  mystical  learning, 
his  familiarity  with  the  writings  of  Ruysbroeck, 
John  of  the  Cross,  Saint  Teresa,  Catharine  Em- 
merich, Saint  Angela,  and  the  rest,  one  cannot 
escape  the  conviction  that  it  is  not  all  deeply 
felt.  Count  S.  C.  de  Soissons  writes :  "  He 
who  praises  the  lasciviousness  of  Alcibiades 
does  not  enjoy  the  pleasure  that  he  had ; 
neither  do  they  experience  the  mystic  ecstasies 
of  the  anchorites  of  the  Thebaid  who  try  to 
parody  their  saintly  lives."  Even  the  striking 
account  of  the  Carmelite's  profession  in  Sister 
Teresa  is  paralleled  in  En  Route.  There  is  not 
so  much  music  talk  as  in  Evelyn  Innes,  for  she 
leaves  its  world  of  vain  and  empty  sonorities. 
This  much  I  found  in  an  early  chapter.  "  In 
Handel  there  are  beautiful  proportions ;  it  is 
beautiful  like  eighteenth-century  architecture, 
but  here  I  can  discover  neither  proportion  nor 
design."  Moore  referred  to  a  Brahms  score, 
which  is  manifestly  absurd.  Whatever  else 
there  may  be  in  Brahms,  we  are  sure  to  dis- 
cover proportion,  design.  Again,  "  She  remem- 
bered that  Cesar  Franck's  music  affected  her  in 
much  the  same  way."  Shrugging  her  shoulders, 
she  said,  "  When  I  listen  I  always  hear  some- 
210 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED    MUSIC 

thing  beautiful,  only  I  don't  listen."  I  fear 
Mr.  Moore  has  succumbed  again  to  the  blan- 
dishing voice  of  Ulick  Dean  Runciman  ! 

And  how  does  it  all  end,  the  psychic  adven- 
tures of  this  Wagner  singer  turned  nun,  this 
woman  who  ''  discovered  two  instincts  in  her- 
self—  an  inveterate  sensuality  and  a  sincere 
aspiration  for  a  spiritual  life  "  ?  She  loses  her 
voice,  like  her  mother,  and  after  relinquishing  all 
idea  of  escaping  from  the  convent  —  not  a  well- 
developed  motive  —  she  settles  down  to  teach- 
ing voice  and  piano.  Sir  Owen  Asher  no  longer 
troubles  her ;  Ulick  Dean  has  evaporated,  or 
perhaps  crumbled  to  dust,  like  an  unheeding 
Brann  if  he  had  touched  the  early  shores  of 
real  life.  No  one  from  the  outside  world  visits 
her  but  Louise,  Mile.  Helbrun,  the  Brangaene 
of  her  Tristan  and  Isolde  days.  To  the  evanes- 
cent bell  booming  of  their  distant  past  goes  the 
conversation  of  the  friends.  It  is  not  so  de- 
pressingly  real,  not  so  moving,  as  the  last  words 
of  Frederic  Moreau  and  Deslauriers  in  the  coda 
to  L'Education  Sentimentale,  —  that  most  per- 
fect of  fictions,  —  but  is  melancholy  enough. 
"  Our  fate  is  more  like  ourselves  than  we  are 
aware,"  and  in  the  last  analysis  Evelyn's  fate 
suits  her.  As  a  singer  she  talked  too  much  like 
a  music  critic ;  as  Sister  Teresa,  too  much 
like  a  sophist  in  a  nun's  habit.  She  was  from 
the  start  a  female  theologian.  Her  conscience 
was    more    to   her    than    her    lovers.     She  was 

21  I 


OVERTONES 

never  quite  in  earnest,  always  a  little  inhuman, 
and  I  for  one  can  contemplate  with  equanimity 
her  immurement  until  her  final  "  packing  up  " 
for  death  and  its  dusty  hypnotism.  After 
reading  the  story  I  was  tempted  to  repeat 
Renan's  remarks  on  Amiel,  —  quoted  by  Er- 
nest Newman  in  his  Wagner,  —  "  He  speaks  of 
sin,  of  salvation,  of  redemption,  and  conversion, 
as  if  these  things  were  realities."  I  wonder  if 
Mr.  Moore  did  not  feel  that  way  sometimes  ! 

But  the  book  is  full  of  brainstuff.  It  is  also 
a  book  with  a  soul.  In  it  George  Moore's  art  is 
come  to  a  spiritual  and  consummate  blossoming. 
After  reading  such  a  passage  of  sustained 
music  as  the  following  I  am  almost  inclined 
to  make  an  expiatory  pilgrimage  to  the  drab 
city  on  the  Liffey,  to  make  of  Dublin  a  critic's 
Canossa ;  and  in  the  heated,  mean  streets,  and 
in  sable  habiliments  of  sorrow,  beat  my  breast 
without  Mr.  Moore's  abode,  crying  aloud, 
"  Peccavi."  But  would  I  be  forgiven  for  all 
that  I  have  said  about  the  noble,  morbid,  dis- 
quieting, and  fascinating  art  of  George  Moore, 
the  Irish  Huysmans  ?  Here  is  a  passage  exe- 
cuted with  incomparable  bravura.  Ulick  Dean 
speaks : — 

To  keep  her  soul  he  said  she  must  fly  from  the  city, 
where  men  lose  their  souls  in  the  rituals  of  materialism. 
He  must  go  with  her  to  the  pure  country,  to  the  woods 
and  to  the  places  where  the  invisible  ones  whom  the 
Druids  knew  ceaselessly  ascend  and  descend  from  earth 


LITERARY  MEN  WHO    LOVED   MUSIC 

to  heaven,  and  from  heaven  to  earth,  in  flame-colored 
spirals.  He  told  her  he  knew  of  a  house  by  a  lake 
shore,  and  there  they  might  live  in  communion  with 
nature,  and  in  the  fading  lights,  and  in  the  quiet  hol- 
lows of  the  woods  she  would  learn  more  of  God  than 
she  could  in  the  convent.  In  that  house  they  would 
live  ;  and  their  child,  if  the  gods  gave  them  one,  would 
unfold  among  the  influences  of  music  and  love  and 
song  traditions. 

It  was  writing  of  a  similar  order  in  Mildred 
Lawson  that  evoked  from  Harry  Thurston  Peck 
the  declaration  :  "  George  Moore  is  the  greatest 
literary  artist  who  has  struck  the  chords  of 
English  since  the  death  of  Thackeray."  George 
Moore  always  had  the  voice.  He  has  now  both 
voice  and  vision. 


213 


ANARCHS   OF   ART 


A   SONNET   BY   CAMPANELLA 

The  people  is  a  beast  of  muddy  brain 

That  knows  not  its  own  strength,  and  therefore  stands 
Loaded  with  wood  and  stone ;  the  powerless  hands 

Of  a  mere  child  guide  it  with  bit  and  rein ; 

One  kick  would  be  enough  to  break  the  chain. 
But  the  beast  fears,  and  what  the  child  demands 
It  does  ;  nor  its  own  terror  understands, 

Confused  and  stupefied  by  bugbears  vain. 

Most  wonderful  !     With  its  own  hand  it  ties 
And  gags  itself — gives  itself  death  and  war 
For  pence  doled  out  by  kings  from  its  own  store. 
Its  own  are  all  things  between  earth  and  heaven; 

But  this  it  knows  not :  and  if  one  arise 

To  tell  this  truth,  it  kills  him  unforgiven. 

—  Translated  by  John  Addington  Symonds. 

Have  not  all  great  composers  been  anarchs 
— from  Bach  to  Strauss  ?  At  first  blush  the  hard- 
plodding  Johann  Sebastian  of  the  Well-tem- 
pered Clavichord  seems  a  doubtful  figure  to 
drape  with  the  black  flag  of  revolt.  He  grew 
a  forest  of  children,  he  worked  early  and  late, 
and  he  played  the  organ  in  church  of  Sundays ; 
but  he  was  a  musical  revolutionist  nevertheless. 
214 


ANARCHS   OF   ART 

His  music  proves  it.  And  he  quarrelled  with 
his  surroundings  like  any  good  social  democrat. 
He  even  went  out  for  a  drink  during  a  prosy 
sermon,  and  came  near  being  discharged  for 
returning  late.  If  Lombroso  were  cognizant  of 
this  suspicious  fact,  he  might  build  a  terrifying 
structure  of  theories,  with  all  sorts  of  inferential 
subcellars.  However,  it  is  Bach's  music  that 
still  remains  revolutionary.  Mozart  and  Gluck 
depended  too  much  on  aristocratic  patronage  to 
play  the  role  of  Solitaries.  But  many  tales  are 
related  of  their  refusal  to  lick  the  boots  of  the 
rich,  to  curve  the  spine  of  the  suppliant.  Both 
were  by  nature  gentle  men,  and  both  occasion- 
ally arose  to  the  situation  and  snubbed  their  pa- 
trons outrageously.  Handel !  A  fighter,  a  born 
revolutionist,  a  hater  of  rulers.  John  Runciman 
—  himself  an  anarchistic  critic  —  calls  Handel 
the  most  magnificent  man  that  ever  lived.  He 
was  certainly  the  most  virile  among  musicians. 

I  recall  the  story  of  Beethoven  refusing  to 
uncover  in  the  presence  of  royalty,  though  his 
companion,  Goethe,  doffed  his  hat.  Theoreti- 
cally I  admire  Beethoven's  independence,  yet 
there  is  no  denying  that  the  great  poet  was  the 
politer  of  the  two,  and  doubtless  a  pleasanter 
man  to  consort  with.  The  mythic  William  Tell 
and  his  contempt  for  Gessler's  hat  were  trans- 
lated into  action  by  the  composer. 

Handel,  despite  the  fact  that  he  could  not  boast 
Beethoven's  peasant  ancestry,  had  a  contempt 

2iq 


OVERTONES 

for  rank  and  its  entailed  snobberies,  that  was  re- 
markable. And  his  music  is  like  a  blow  from  a 
muscular  fist.  Haydn  need  not  be  considered. 
He  was  henpecked,  and  for  the  same  reason  as 
was  Socrates.  The  Croatian  composer's  wife 
told  some  strange  stories  of  that  merry  little 
blade,  her  chamber-music  husband.  As  I  do  not 
class  Mendelssohn  among  the  great  composers, 
he  need  not  be  discussed.  His  music  was  Bach 
watered  for  general  consumption.  Schubert 
was  an  anarch  all  his  short  life.  He  is  said  to 
have  loved  an  Esterhazy  girl,  and  being  snubbed 
he  turned  sour-souled.  He  drank  "  far  more 
than  was  good  for  him,"  and  he  placed  on  paper 
the  loveliest  melodies  the  world  has  ever  heard. 
Beethoven  was  the  supreme  anarch  of  art,  and 
put  into  daily  practice  the  radicalism  of  his 
music. 

Because  of  its  opportunities  for  soul  expan- 
sion, music  has  ever  attracted  the  strong  free 
sons  of  earth.  The  most  profound  truths,  the 
most  blasphemous  things,  the  most  terrible  ideas, 
may  be  incorporated  within  the  walls  of  a  sym- 
phony, and  the  police  be  none  the  wiser.  Sup- 
pose that  some  Russian  professional  supervisor 
of  artistic  anarchy  really  knew  what  arrant  doc- 
trines Tscha'ikowsky  preached !  It  is  its  freedom 
from  the  meddlesome  hand  of  the  censor  that 
makes  of  music  a  playground  for  great  brave 
souls.  Richard  Wagner  in  Siegfried,  and  under 
the  long  nose  of  royalty,  preaches  anarchy, 
216 


ANARCHS    OF   ART 

puts  into  tone,  words,  gestures,  lath,  plaster, 
paint,  and  canvas  an  allegory  of  humanity  liber- 
ated from  the  convention  of  authority,  from 
what  Bernard  Shaw  would  call  the  Old  Man  of 
the  Mountain,  the  Government. 

I  need  only  adduce  the  names  of  Schumann, 
another  revolutionist  like  Chopin  in  the  psychic 
sphere ;  Liszt,  bitten  by  the  Socialistic  theories 
of  Saint-Simon,  a  rank  hater  of  conventions  in 
art,  though  in  life  a  silken  courtier ;  Brahms,  a 
social  democrat  and  freethinker ;  and  Tschai'- 
kowsy,  who  buried  more  bombs  in  his  work  than 
ever  Chopin  with  his  cannon  among  roses  or 
Bakounine  with  his  terrible  prose  of  a  nihilist. 
Years  ago  I  read  and  doubted  Mr.  Ashton-Ellis's 
interesting  "  1849,"  with  its  fallacious  denial  of 
Wagner's  revolutionary  behavior.  Wagner  may 
not  have  shouldered  a  musket  during  the  Dres- 
den uprising,  but  he  was,  with  Michael  Bakou- 
nine, its  prime  inspirer.  His  very  ringing  of 
the  church  bells  during  the  row  is  a  symbol  of 
his  attitude.  And  then  he  ran  away,  luckily 
enough  for  the  world  of  music,  while  his  com- 
panions, Roeckel  and  Bakounine,  were  captured 
and  imprisoned.  Wagner  might  be  called  the 
Joseph  Proudhon  of  composers  —  his  music  is 
anarchy  itself,  coldly  deliberate  like  the  sad  and 
logical  music  we  find  in  the  great  Frenchman's 
Philosophy  of  Misery  (a  subtitle,  by  the  way). 

And  what  a  huge  regiment  of  painters,  poets, 
sculptors,  prosateurs,  journalists,  and  musicians 
217 


OVERTONES 

might  not  be  included  under  the  roof  of  the 
House  Beautiful !  Verhaeren  of  Belgium,  whose 
powerful  bass  hurls  imprecations  at  the  present 
order;  Georges  Eckhoud,  Maurice  Maeterlinck; 
Constantin  Meunier,  whose  eloquent  bronzes 
are  a  protest  against  the  misery  of  the  proleta- 
rians; Octave  Mirbeau,  Richepin,  William  Blake, 
William  Morris,  Swinburne,  Maurice  Barres,  the 
late  Stephane  Mallarme,  Walt  Whitman,  Ibsen, 
Strindberg ;  Felicien  Rops,  the  sinister  author 
of  love  and  death  ;  Edvard  Munch,  whose  men 
and  women  with  staring  eyes  and  fuliginous 
faces  seem  to  discern  across  the  frame  of  his 
pictures  febrile  visions  of  terror ;  and  the  great 
Scandinavian  sculptors,  Vigeland  and  Sinding ; 
and  Zola,  Odilon  Redon,  Huysmans,  Heine,  Bau- 
delaire, Poe,  Richard  Strauss,  Shaw, — is  not 
the  art  of  these  men,  and  many  more  left  un- 
named, direct  personal  expression  of  anarchic 
revolt  ? 

Przybyszewski  asserts  that  physicians  do  not 
busy  themselves  with  history ;  if  they  did,  they 
would  know  that  decadence  has  always  existed  ; 
that  it  is  not  decadence  at  all,  but  merely  a 
phase  of  development  as  important  as  normality  : 
Normality  is  stupidity,  decadence  is  genius  !  Is 
there,  he  asks,  a  more  notable  case  of  the  abnor- 
mal than  the  prophet  of  Protestantism,  Martin 
Luther  ? 

They  are  all  children  of  Satan,  he  cries,  those 
great  ones  who  for  the  sake  of  the  idea  sacrifice 
218 


ANARCHS   OF   ART 

the  peace  of  thousands,  as  Alexander  and  Napo- 
leon; or  those  who  spoil  the  dreams  of  youth, 
Socrates  and  Schopenhauer ;  or  those  who  ven- 
ture into  the  depths  and  love  sin  because  only  sin 
has  depth,  Poe  and  Rops ;  and  those  who  love 
pain  for  the  sake  of  pain  and  ascend  the  Golgotha 
of  mankind,  Chopin  and  Schumann.  Satan  was 
the  first  philosopher,  the  first  anarchist ;  and 
pain  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  art,  and  with  Satan, 
the  father  of  illusions !  It  is  wise  to  stop  here, 
else  might  we  become  entangled  in  a  Miltonic 
genealogy  of  the  angels.  I  give  the  foregoing 
list  to  show  how  easy  it  is  to  twist  a  theory  to 
one's  own  point  of  view.  The  decadence  theory 
is  silly;  and  equally  absurd  is  Przybyszewski's 
idea  that  the  normal  is  the  stupid.  This  Pole 
seems  anything  but  normal  or  stupid.  He  now 
writes  plays  in  the  Strindberg  style  ;  formerly  he 
lectured  on  Chopin,  and  played  the  F  sharp 
minor  polonaise  —  he  was  possessed  by  the 
key  of  F  sharp  minor,  and  saw  "  soul-states " 
whenever  a  composer  wrote  in  that  tonality ! 
Audition  colore e,  this  ? 

Nor  is  there  cause  for  alarm  in  the  word 
anarchy,  which  means  in  its  ideal  state  unfet- 
tered self-government.  If  we  all  were  self-gov- 
erned governments  would  be  sinecures.  Anarchy 
often  expresses  itself  in  rebellion  against  conven- 
tional art  forms — -the  only  kind  of  anarchy  that 
interests  me.  A  most  signal  example  is  Henry 
James.  Surprising  it  is  to  find  this  fastidious 
219 


OVERTONES 

artist  classed  among  the  anarchs  of  art,  is  it  not  ? 
He  is  one,  as  surely  as  was  Turgenieff,  the  de 
Goncourts,  or  Flaubert.  The  novels  of  his  later 
period,  —  What  Maisie  Knew,  The  Wings  of  a 
Dove,  The  Ambassadors,  The  Better  Sort,  The 
Sacred  Fount,  The  Awkward  Age,  and  the 
rest,  —  do  they  not  all  betray  the  revolution  of 
Henry  James  from  the  army  of  the  conven- 
tional ?  He  will  be  no  dull  realist  or  flamboyant 
romantic  or  desiccated  idealist.  Every  book  he 
has  written,  from  The  Lesson  of  the  Master  and 
The  Pattern  in  the  Carpet,  is  at  once  a  personal 
confession  and  a  declaration  of  artistic  inde- 
pendence. Subtle  Henry  James  among  the 
revolutionists  !  Yes,  it  is  even  so.  He  has 
seceded  forever  from  the  army  of  English  tra- 
dition, from  Bronte,  Eliot,  Dickens,  and  Thack- 
eray. He  may  be  the  discoverer  of  the  fiction 
of  the  future. 

The  fiction  of  the  future !  It  is  an  idea  that 
propounds  itself  after  reading  The  Wings  of  the 
Dove.  Here  at  last  is  companion  work  to  the 
modern  movement  in  music,  sculpture,  painting. 
Why  prose  should  lag  behind  its  sister  arts  I  do 
not  know  ;  possibly  because  every  drayman  and 
pothouse  politician  is  supposed  to  speak  it.  But 
any  one  who  has  dipped  into  that  well  of  Eng- 
lish undefiled,  the  seventeenth-century  literature, 
must  realize  that  to-day  we  write  parlous  and 
bastard  prose.  It  is  not,  however,  splendid, 
220 


ANARCHS    OF   ART 

stately,  rhythmic  prose  that  Mr.  James  essays  or 
ever  has  essayed.  For  him  the  "  steam-dried 
style "  of  Pater,  as  Brander  Matthews  cruelly 
calls  it,  has  never  offered  attractions.  The  son 
of  a  metaphysician  and  moralist,  —  I  once  fed 
full  on  Henry  James,  senior,  —  the  brother  of 
that  most  brilliant  psychologist,  William  James, 
of  Harvard,  it  need  hardly  be  said  that  character 
problems  are  of  more  interest  to  this  novelist  than 
are  the  external  qualities  of  rhetorical  sonority,  the 
glow  and  fascination  of  surfaces.  Reared  upon 
the  minor  moralities  of  Hawthorne,  and  ever  an 
interested,  curious  observer  of  manners,  the  youth- 
ful James  wrote  books  which  pictured  in  his  own 
exquisite  orchestra  of  discreet  tints  and  delicate 
grays  the  gestures,  movements,  and  thoughts 
of  many  persons,  principally  those  of  travelled 
Americans.  He  pinned  to  the  printed  page  a 
pronounced  type  in  his  Daisy  Miller,  and  shall 
we  ever  forget  his  Portrait  of  a  Lady,  the  Prin> 
cess  Cassimassima, — the  latter  not  without  a 
touch  of  one  of  Turgenieff's  bewilderingly  capri- 
cious heroines.  It  is  from  the  great,  effortless 
art  of  the  Russian  master  that  Mr.  James  mainly 
derives.  But  Turgenieff  represented  only  one 
form  of  influence,  and  not  a  continuing  one. 
Hawthorne  it  was  in  whom  Mr.  James  first 
planted  his  faith ;  the  feeling  that  Hawthorne's 
love  of  the  moral  problem  still  obsesses  the  liv- 
ing artist  is  not  missed  in  his  newer  books.  The 
Puritan  lurks  in  James,  though  a  Puritan  tem- 
221 


OVERTONES 

pered  by  culture,  by  a  humanism  only  possible 
in  this  age.  Mr.  James  has  made  the  odious 
word,  and  still  more  odious  quality  of  cosmo- 
politanism, a  thing  of  rare  delight.  In  his 
newer  manner,  be  it  never  so  cryptic,  his 
Americans  abroad  suffer  a  rich  sea  change, 
and  from  Daisy  Miller  to  Milly  Theale  is  the 
chasm  of  many  years  of  temperamental  culture. 
We  wonder  if  the  American  girl  has  so  changed, 
or  whether  the  difference  lies  with  the  author ; 
whether  he  has  readjusted  his  point  of  vantage 
with  the  flight  of  time ;  or  if  Daisy  Miller  was 
but  a  bit  of  literary  illusion,  the  pia  fraus  of  an 
artist's  brain.  Perhaps  it  is  her  latest  sister, 
Milly,  whose  dovelike  wings  hover  about  the 
selfish  souls  of  her  circle,  that  is  the  purer  em- 
bodiment of  an  artistic  dream. 

The  question  that  most  interests  me  is  the 
one  I  posed  at  the  outset :  Is  this  to  be  the  fic- 
tion of  the  future,  are  The  Wings  of  a  Dove  or 
The  Ambassadors  —  the  latter  is  a  marvellous 
illusion — and  studies  of  the  like  to  be  considered 
as  prose  equivalents  of  such  moderns  as  Whistler, 
Monet,  Munch,  Debussy,  Rodin,  Richard  Strauss, 
and  the  rest  ?  In  latter-day  art  the  tendency  to 
throw  overboard  superfluous  baggage  is  a  marked 
one.  The  James  novel  is  one  of  grand  simpli- 
fications. As  the  symphony  has  been  modified 
by  Berlioz  and  Liszt  until  it  assumed  the  shape 
of  the  symphonic  poem,  and  was  finally  made 
over  into  the  guise  of  the  tone-poem  by  Richard 

222 


ANARCHS    OF   ART 

Strauss,  so  the  novel  of  manners  of  the  future 
must  stem  from  Flaubert's  Sentimental  Educa- 
tion or  else  remain  an  academic  imitation,  a  rep- 
lica of  Thackeray  or  of  George  Eliot's  inelastic 
moulds.  Despite  its  length  —  "heavenly,"  as 
Schumann  would  say — Sentimental  Education 
contains  in  solution  all  that  the  newer  novelists 
have  since  accomplished.  Zola  has  clumsily 
patterned  after  it,  Daudet  found  there  his  im- 
pressionism anticipated.  All  the  new  men, 
Maupassant,  Huysmans,  Loti,  Barres,  Mirbeau, 
and  others,  discovered  in  this  cyclopaedic  man 
what  they  needed ;  for  if  Flaubert  is  the  father 
of  realism  he  is  also  a  parent  of  symbolism. 
His  excessive  preoccupation  with  style  and  his 
attaching  esoteric  significance  to  his  words  sound 
the  note  of  symbolism.  Mr.  James  dislikes  Sen- 
timental Education,  yet  he  has  not  failed  to 
benefit  by  the  radical  formal  changes  Flaubert 
introduced  in  his  novel,  changes  more  revolution- 
ary than  Wagner's  in  the  music-drama.  I  call  the 
James  novel  a  simplification.  All  the  conventional 
chapter  endings  are  dispensed  with ;  many  are 
suspended  cadences.  All  barren  modulations 
from  event  to  event  are  swept  away  —  unpre- 
pared dissonances  are  of  continual  occurrence. 
There  is  no  descriptive  padding  —  that  bane  of 
second-class  writers ;  nor  are  we  informed  at 
every  speech  of  a  character's  name.  The  ellip- 
tical method  James  has  absorbed  from  Flaubert ; 
his  oblique  psychology  is  his  own.  All  this 
223 


OVERTONES 

makes  difficult  reading  for  the  reader  accus- 
tomed to  the  cheap  hypnotic  passes  of  fiction 
mediums.  Nothing  is  forestalled,  nothing  is 
obvious,  and  one  is  forever  turning  the  curve  of 
the  unexpected ;  yet  while  the  story  is  trying  in 
its  bareness,  the  situations  are  not  abnormal.  You 
rub  your  eyes  when  you  finish,  for  with  all  your 
attention,  painful  in  its  intensity,  you  have  wit- 
nessed a  pictorial  evocation ;  both  picture  and 
evocation  wear  magic  in  their  misty  attenua- 
tions. And  there  is  always  the  triumph  of 
poetic  feeling  over  mere  sentiment.  Surely 
Milly  Theale  is  the  most  exquisite  portrait  in  his 
gallery  of  exquisite  portraiture.  Her  life  is  a 
miracle,  and  her  ending  supreme  art.  The  en- 
tire book  is  filled  with  the  faintly  audible  patter 
of  destiny's  tread  behind  the  arras  of  life,  of 
microphonic  reverberations,  of  a  crescendo  that 
sets  your  soul  shivering  long  before  the  climax. 
It  is  all  art  in  the  superlative,  the  art  of  Jane 
Austen  raised  to  the  nth  degree,  superadded  to 
Mr.  James's  implacable  curiosity  about  causes 
final.  The  question  whether  his  story  is  worth 
telling  is  a  critical  impertinence  too  often  ut- 
tered ;  what  most  concerns  us  is  his  manner  in 
the  telling. 

The  style  is  a  jungle  of  inversions,  suspen- 
sions, elisions,  repetitions,  echoes,  transpositions, 
transformations,  neologisms,  in  which  the  heads 
of  young  adjectives  gaze  despairingly  and  from 
afar  at  verbs  that  come  thundering  in  Teutonic 
224 


ANARCHS    OF   ART 

fashion  at  the  close  of  sentences  leagues  long. 
It  is  all  very  bewildering,  but  more  bewildering 
is  the  result  when  you  draft  out  in  smooth,  jour- 
nalistic style  this  peculiarly  individual  style. 
Nothing  remains ;  Mr.  James  has  not  spoken  ; 
his  dissonances  cannot  be  resolved  except  by 
his  own  matchless  art.  In  a  word,  his  meanings 
evaporate  when  phrased  in  our  vernacular.  This 
may  prove  a  lot  of  negating  things  and  it  may 
not.  Either  way  it  is  not  to  the  point.  And 
yet  the  James  novels  may  be  the  fiction  of  the 
future  ;  a  precursor  of  the  book  our  children  and 
grandchildren  will  enjoy  when  all  the  hurly-burly 
of  noisy  adventure,  of  cheap  historical  tales  and 
still  cheaper  drawing-room  struttings  shall  have 
vanished.  A  deeper  notation,  a  wider  synthesis 
will,  I  hope,  be  practised.  In  an  illuminating 
essay  Arthur  Symons  places  Meredith  among 
the  decadents,  the  dissolvers  of  their  mother 
speech,  the  men  who  shatter  syntax  to  serve 
their  artistic  purposes.  Henry  James  has  be- 
longed to  this  group  for  a  longer  time  than  any 
of  his  critics  have  suspected ;  French  influ- 
ences, purely  formal,  however,  have  modified 
his  work  into  what  it  now  is,  what  the  critical 
men  call  his  "third  manner."  In  his  ruthless 
disregard  for  the  niceties  and  conventionalities 
of  sentence  structure  I  see,  or  seem  to  see,  the 
effect  of  the  Goncourts,  notably  in  Madame  Ger- 
vaisais.  No  matter  how  involved  and  crabbed  ap- 
pears his  page,  a  character  emerges  from  the 
Q  225 


OVERTONES 

smoke  of  muttered  enchantments.  The  chiefest 
fault  is  that  his  characters  always  speak  in  pur- 
est Jamesian.  So  do  Balzac's  people.  So  do 
Dickens's  and  Meredith's.  It  is  the  fault,  or 
virtue,  of  all  subjective  genius.  Yet  in  his  oblit- 
eration of  self  James  recalls  Flaubert ;  like  the 
wind  upon  the  troubled  waters,  his  power  is 
sensed  rather  than  seen. 

I  have  left  Berlioz  and  Strauss  for  the  last. 
The  former  all  his  life  long  was  a  flaming  indi- 
vidualist. His  books,  his  utterances,  his  conduct, 
prove  it.  Hector  of  the  Flaming  Locks,  fiery 
speech,  and  crimson  scores,  would  have  made 
a  picturesque  figure  on  the  barricades  waving  a 
red  flag  or  casting  bombs.  His  Fantastic  Sym- 
phony is  full  of  the  tonal  commandments  of 
anarchic  revolt.  As  Strauss  is  a  living  issue, 
the  only  one,  —  Dvorak,  Saint-Saens,  Grieg,  Gold- 
mark,  and  the  neo-Russians  are  only  rewriting 
musical  history,  —  it  is  best  that  his  theme  is 
separately  considered.  But  I  have  written  so 
much  of  Strauss  that  it  is  beginning  to  be  a 
fascination,  as  is  the  parrot  in  Flaubert's  Un 
Cceur  Simple  —  and  this  is  not  well.  Sufficient 
to  add  that  as  in  politics  he  is  a  Social  Democrat, 
so  in  his  vast  and  memorial  art  he  is  the  anarch 
of  anarchs.  Not  as  big  a  fellow  in  theme-mak- 
ing as  Beethoven,  he  far  transcends  Beethoven 
in  harmonic  originality.  His  very  scheme  of 
harmonization  is  the  sign  of  a  soul  insurgent. 
226 


ANARCHS    OF    ART 

In  The  Anarchists,  with  its  just  motto,  "A 
hundred  fanatics  are  found  to  support  a  theo- 
logical or  metaphysical  statement,  but  net  one 
for  a  geometric  theorem,"  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  Lombroso  has  worked  in  futile  veins.  His 
conclusions  are  rash  ;  indeed,  his  whole  philoso- 
phy of  Degeneration  and  Madness  has  a  literary 
color  rather  than  a  sound  scientific  basis.  But 
he  has  contrived  to  throw  up  many  fertile  ideas  ; 
and  secretly  the  reading  world  likes  to  believe 
that  its  writers,  artists,  composers,  are  more  or 
less  crazy.  Hence  the  neat  little  formula  of 
artistic  Mattoids,  gifted  men  whose  brains  are 
tinged  with  insanity.  Hazlitt,  in  one  of  his 
clear,  strongly  fibred  essays,  disposed  of  the 
very  idea  a  century  back,  and  with  words  of 
stinging  scorn.  Yet  it  is  fanaticism  that  has 
given  the  world  its  artistic  beauty,  given  it  those 
dreams  that  overflow  into  our  life,  as  Arthur 
Symons  so  finely  said  of  Gerard  de  Nerval. 
And  the  most  incomplete  and  unconvincing 
chapter  of  the  Lombroso  book  is  that  devoted 
to  sane  men  of  genius.  At  the  risk  of  incon- 
sistency I  feel  like  asserting  that  there  are  no 
sane  men  of  genius. 


227 


VI 


THE  BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH 
PROSE 

i 

FLAUBERT   AND    HIS  ART 

The  maker  of  a  great  style,  a  lyric  poet,  who 
selected  as  an  instrument  the  "  other  harmony 
of  prose,"  a  master  of  characterization  and 
the  creator  of  imperishable  volumes,  Gustave 
Flaubert  is  indeed  the  Beethoven  of  French 
prose.  Never  was  the  life  of  a  genius  so  barren 
of  content,  never  had  there  been  seemingly  such 
a  waste  of  force.  In  forty  years  only  four 
completed  books,  three  tales,  and  an  unfinished 
volume ;  a  sort  of  satyricon  and  lexicon  of  stu- 
pidity— what  else  is  Bouvard  et  Pecuchet?  The 
outlay  of  power  was  just  short  of  the  phenom- 
enal, and  this  Colossus  of  Croisset,  —  one  falls 
into  superlatives  when  dealing  with  him,  —  this 
man  tormented  by  an  ideal  of  style,  a  man  who 
formed  a  whole  generation  of  writers,  is  only 
coming  into  his  kingdom.  In  his  correspond- 
ence he  is  the  most  facile,  the  most  personal, 
the  least  impassable  of  artists ;  in  his  work  the 
228 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

most  concentrated,  objective,  and  reticent.  There 
never  has  been  in  French  prose  such  a  densely 
spun  style,  —  the  web  fairly  glistening  with  the 
idea.  Yet  of  opacity  there  is  none.  Like  one 
of  those  marvellous  tapestries  woven  in  the  hid- 
den East,  the  clear  woof  of  Flaubert's  motive  is 
never  obscured  or  tangled.  George  Moore  de- 
clares L'Education  Sentimentale  to  be  as  great 
a  work  as  Tristan  und  Isolde.  It  is  the  po- 
lyphony, the  magical  crossings,  recrossings,  the 
interweaving  of  the  subject  and  the  long,  ellip- 
tical thematic  loops  made  with  such  consummate 
ease  that  command  admiration.  Flaubert  was 
above  all  a  musician,  a  musical  poet.  The  ear 
was  his  final  court  of  appeal,  and  to  make 
sonorous  cadences  in  a  language  that  lacks 
essential  richness  —  it  is  without  the  great  dia- 
pasonic  undertow  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  —  was  just 
short  of  the  miraculous.  Until  Chateaubriand's 
and  Victor  Hugo's  time  the  French  tongue  was 
rather  a  formal  pattern  than  a  plastic,  liquid 
collocation  of  sounds.  They  blazed  the  path 
for  Flaubert,  and  he,  with  almost  Spartan  re- 
straint and  logical  mind,  made  the  language 
richer,  more  flexible,  more  musical,  polished,  and 
precise.  The  word  and  the  idea  were  indis- 
solubly  associated,  a  perfect  welding  of  matter 
and  manner.  Omnipresent  with  him  was  the 
musician's  idea  of  composing  a  masterpiece  that 
would  float  by  sheer  style,  a  masterpiece  un- 
hampered by  an  idea.  The  lyric  ecstasy  of  his 
229 


OVERTONES 

written  speech  quite  overmastered  him.  He  was 
a  poet  as  were  De  Quincey,  Pater,  and  Poe.  The 
modulation  of  his  style  to  his  themes  caused  him 
inconceivable  agony.  A  man  of  equal  gifts,  and 
less  exacting  conscience,  would  have  calmly 
written  at  length,  letting  style  go  free  in  his 
pursuit  of  theme ;  but  Flaubert  strove  cease- 
lessly to  overcome  the  antinomianism  of  his 
material.  He  wrote  La  Tentation  de  Saint 
Antoine,  and  its  pages  sing  with  golden  throats  ; 
transpose  this  style  to  the  lower  key  of  L' Educa- 
tion Sentimentale,  and  we  find  the  artist  mad- 
dened by  the  incongruity  of  surface  and  subject. 
In  Madame  Bovary,  with  its  symphonic  de- 
scriptions, Flaubert's  style  was  happily  mated ; 
while  in  the  three  short  tales  he  is  almost  flaw- 
less. Then  came  Bouvard  et  Pecuchet,  and 
here  his  most  ardent  lover  recognizes  the  su- 
perb stylistic  curve.  The  book  is  a  mound  of 
pitiless  irony,  yet  a  mound,  not  a  living  organ- 
ism. Despite  its  epical  breadth,  there  is  some- 
thing inhuman,  too,  in  the  Homeric  harmonies 
of  Salammbo. 

With  the  young  wind  of  the  twentieth  century 
blowing  in  our  faces  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  pose 
Flaubert  academically.  His  greatness  consists 
in  his  not  being  speared  by  any  literary  camp. 
The  romanticists  claimed  him  ;  they  were  right. 
The  realists  declared  that  he  was  their  leader, 
and  the  extreme  naturalists  cried  up  to  him, 
"  O  Master  !  "  They  too  were  wise.  Something 
230 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

of  the  idealist,  of  the  realist,  is  in  Flaubert ; 
he  is  never  the  doctrinaire.  Temperamentally 
he  was  a  poet ;  masked  epilepsy  made  him  a 
pessimist.  In  a  less  cramped  milieu  he  might 
have  accomplished  more,  but  he  would  have  lost 
as  a  writer.  It  was  his  fanatical  worship  of  form 
that  ranks  him  as  the  greatest  artist  in  fiction 
the  world  has  ever  read.  Without  Balzac's  in- 
vention, without  Turgenieff's  tenderness,  without 
Tolstoy's  broad  humanity,  he  nevertheless  out- 
strips them  all  as  an  artist.  It  is  his  music  that 
will  live  when  his  themes  are  rusty  with  the 
years  ;  it  is  his  glorious  vision  of  the  possibilities 
of  formal  beauty  that  has  made  his  work  classic. 
You  may  detect  the  heart-beat  in  Flaubert  if 
your  ear  is  finely  attuned  to  his  harmonies.  A 
despiser  of  the  facile  triumph,  of  the  appeal 
sentimental,  he  reminds  me  more  of  Landor 
than  De  Quincey,  —  a  Landor  informed  by  a  pas- 
sion for  fiction.  There  are  pages  of  Flaubert  that 
one  lingers  over  for  the  melody,  for  the  evocation 
of  dim  landscapes,  for  the  burning  hush  of  noon. 
In  the  presence  of  passion  he  showed  his  ances- 
try ;  he  became  the  surgeon,  not  the  sympathetic 
nurse,  as  was  the  case  with  many  of  his  con- 
temporaries. He  studied  the  amorous  malady 
with  great  cold  eyes,  for  his  passions  were  all 
intellectual.  He  had  no  patience  with  conven- 
tional sentimentality.  And  how  clearly  he  saw 
through  the  hypocrisy  of  patriotism,  the  false 
mouthing  of  politicians  !  A  small  literature  has 
231 


OVERTONES 

been  modelled  after  his  portrait  of  the  discon- 
tented demagogues  in  L' Education  Sentimentale. 
The  grim  humor  of  that  famous  meeting  at  the 
Club  of  Intellect  set  Turgenieff  off  into  huge 
peals  of  laughter.  It  is  incredibly  lifelike.  A 
student  of  detail,  Flaubert  gave  the  imaginative 
lift  to  all  he  wrote:  his  was  a  winged  realism, 
and  in  Madame  Bovary  we  are  continually  con- 
fronted with  evidences  of  his  idealistic  power. 
Content  to  create  a  small  gallery  of  portraits,  he 
wreaked  himself  in  giving  them  adequate  expres- 
sion, in  investing  them  with  vitality,  charac- 
teristic coloring,  with  everything  but  charm. 
Flaubert  has  not  the  sympathetic  charm  of  his 
brother-at-arms,  Ivan  Turgenieff.  In  private  life 
a  man  of  extraordinary  magnetism,  his  bonze- 
like suppression  of  personal  traits  in  his  books 
tells  us  of  martyrdom  to  a  lofty  theory  of  style. 
He  sacrificed  his  life  to  art,  and  an  unheeding, 
ungrateful  generation  first  persecuted  and  then 
passed  him  by.  It  is  the  very  tragedy  of  litera- 
ture that  a  man  of  robust  individuality,  handsome, 
nattered,  and  wealthy,  should  retire  for  life  to  a 
room  overlooking  the  Seine,  near  Rouen,  and 
there  wrestle  with  the  seven  devils  of  rhetoric. 
He  subdued  them  —  made  them  bond-slaves;  but 
he  wore  himself  out  in  the  struggle.  He  sought 
to  extort  from  his  instrument  music  that  was  not 
in  it.  What  he  might  have  done  with  the  organ- 
toned  English  language  after  so  triumphantly 
mastering  the  technique  of  the  French  keyboard 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

—  a  genuine  piano  keyboard  —  we  may  only 
hazard.  His  name  is  one  of  the  glories  of 
French  literature,  and  in  these  times  of  scamped 
workmanship,  when  the  cap  and  bells  of  cheap 
historical  romance  and  the  evil-smelling  weed 
of  the  dialect  novel  are  ruling  fiction,  the  figure 
of  the  great  Frenchman  is  at  once  a  refuge  and 
an  evocation. 

Many  years  have  passed  since  Gustave  Flau- 
bert published  his  third  novel,  L'Education  Sen- 
timentale ;  and  whether  it  was  the  unhappy  title 
or  the  political  condition  of  France  at  the  time, 

—  Turgenieff  declared  that  it  was  the  former, — 
the  big  book  of  five  hundred  pages  failed  to 
attract  much  attention.  There  was  no  public 
prosecution,  as  with  Madame  Bovary,  nor  did 
the  subject-matter  invite  the  controversy  of 
archaeologists ;  so  to  the  chagrin  of  the  great 
pupil  of  Chateaubriand  and  Balzac  this  master- 
piece of  "pitiless  observation"  hardly  aroused  a 
protest.  To  be  sure,  M.  Rene  Taillandier  saw  in 
its  pages  a  covert  attack  on  the  idea  of  young 
manhood,  but  then  M.  Taillandier  was  given  to 
the  discovery  of  literary  mare's  nests,  and  the 
Franco-Prussian  war  intervening,  one  of  the 
greatest  of  descriptive  novels  was  allowed  to 
repose  in  dusty  peace. 

As  George  Moore,  in  one  of  the  most  luminous 
of  his  criticisms,  so  truthfully  says,  "  Since  then 
it  has  been  read  by  novelists  in  search  of  mate- 
233 


OVERTONES 

rial,  and  they  held  their  tongues,  partly  because 
it  was  easier  to  steal  than  to  appreciate,  partly 
because  they  did  not  wish  to  draw  attention  to 
their  thefts."  Yet  L'Education  Sentimentale 
was  not  altogether  missed  by  the  critics.  Paul 
Bourget  won  his  way  to  critical  fame  with  his 
exhaustive  study  of  its  creator ;  Henri  Taine 
wrote  sympathetically  of  him ;  Henry  James, 
who  will  yield  to  no  one  in  his  admiration  of 
the  dead  master,  frankly  confesses  that  the  novel 
is  dead,  is  as  sawdust  and  ashes,  while  George 
Saintsbury  cannot  sufficiently  praise  it.  It  is 
for  him  "  a  whole  Comedic  Humaine  of  failure 
in  two  volumes,"  and  Flaubert  "can  do  with  a 
couple  of  epithets  what  Balzac  takes  a  page  of 
laborious  analysis  to  do  less  perfectly."  It  re- 
mained for  Mr.  Moore  to  cry  the  work  to 
heaven  and  to  point  out  that  while  Balzac 
might  have  written  Madame  Bovary,  no  one 
but  Flaubert  could  have  produced  L'Education 
Sentimentale. 

Mr.  Moore  is  right ;  the  novel  is  stupendous, 
is  appalling  in  its  magnitude  and  handling  of 
the  unpromising  material  of  life,  in  its  piercing 
analysis,  power  of  concrete  characterization,  and 
overwhelming  mastery  of  style.  "  The  ignoble 
pleases  me,"  Flaubert  said  once;  "it  is  the  sub- 
lime of  the  lower  slopes."  L'Education  Senti- 
mentale is  the  very  lowest  slope  of  the  ignobly 
sublime. 

"  The  great  artists  are  those  who  impose  on 
234 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

humanity  their  particular  illusions,"  cries  Guy 
de  Maupassant,  after  serving  seven  long  years 
of  apprenticeship  to  Flaubert  and  literature, 
with  what  results  we  all  know.  Flaubert's 
particular  illusion  was  so  completely  magnifi- 
cent that  but  few  of  his  intimates  absolutely 
realized  it.  Life,  he  confessed,  was  to  him  a 
bad  odor ;  "  it  was  like  an  odor  of  unpleasant 
cooking  escaping  by  a  vent-hole."  Yet  despite 
his  love  of  the  exotic,  of  the  barbarous,  of  the 
Orient,  he  forced  himself  to  see  it,  handle  it, 
estimate  it,  and  write  of  it.  When  he  wished  to 
roam  in  the  East  or  in  old  Carthaginian  times, 
he  took  up  the  history  of  the  daughter  of  Farmer 
Roualt,  and  we  got  Emma  Bovary.  When  Egypt 
and  the  Thebaid  tempted  him  with  its  ascetic 
gloom  and  dream  splendors,  he  resolutely  tied 
himself  to  his  monkish  desk  at  Croisset  and 
worked  for  six  years  at  L' Education  Sentimen- 
tale. 

Picture  to  yourself  this  green-eyed  Norman 
giant,  stalking  up  and  down  his  terrace  spouting 
aloud  Chateaubriand,  whose  sonorous,  cadenced 
lines  were  implacably  engraved  on  his  memory. 
Flaubert's  favorite  passage  was  this  from  Atala  : 
"  Elle  repand  dans  le  bois  ce  grand  secret  de 
melancholie  qu'elle  aime  a  raconter  aux  vieux 
chenes  et  aux  rivages  antiques  des  mers."  One 
recalls  Matthew  Arnold's  love  for  Maurice  de 
Guerin's  Centaur,  and  his  eternal  quotation  of 
that  marmoreal  phrase,  "  But  upon  the  shores  of 
235 


OVERTONES 

what  ocean  have  they  rolled  the  stone  that 
hides  them,  O  Macareus?"  Little  wonder  that 
the  passengers  on  the  steamboat  bound  for  Rouen 
enjoyed  the  spectacle  of  the  inspired  martyr  to 
style  as  he  paced  his  garden  in  an  old  dressing- 
gown,  chanting  the  swelling  phrases  of  Chateau- 
briand ! 

Relentlessly  pursued  by  the  demon  of  perfec- 
tion, a  victim  to  epilepsy,  a  despiser  of  the  sec- 
ond-hand art  of  his  day,  is  it  not  strange 
that  Flaubert  ever  wrote  a  line  ?  Execution 
was  for  him  a  painful  parturition ;  he  was  de- 
livered of  his  phrases  in  agony,  and  yet  his  first 
book,  born  after  ten  years  of  herculean  effort; 
was  a  masterpiece.  Did  not  a  great  critic  say, 
"  Madame  Bovary  is  one  of  the  glories  of  French 
literature  ?  "  But  it  almost  sent  its  author  to  jail. 
Without  the  toleration,  the  adaptability  of  his 
dear  comrade,  Turgenieff,  Flaubert  took  life 
symphonically.  It  was  a  sad,  serious  thing,  and 
to  escape  its  rigors  he  surrounded  himself  in  the 
magic  cloud  of  an  ironic  art,  —  an  art  addressed 
to  the  elect.  He  felt  the  immedicable  pity  of 
existence,  yet  never  resorted  to  the  cheap  reli- 
gious nostrums  and  political  prophylactics  of  his 
contemporaries.  He  despised  the  bourgeois; 
this  lifelong  rancor  was  at  once  his  deliverance 
and  his  downfall;  it  gave  us  L' Education  Senti- 
mentale,  but  it  also  produced  Bouvard  et  Pecu- 
chet.  Judged  by  toilsome  standards  of  criticism, 
Flaubert  was  a  failure,  but  a  failure  monstrous., 
236 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

outrageous,  and  almost  cosmical ;  there  is  some- 
thing elemental  in  this  failure.  As  satirical  as 
Swift,  he  was  devoured  by  a  lyrism  as  passion- 
ate as  Victor  Hugo's.  This  colossus  of  ennui 
set  out  to  conquer  material  life,  to  crush  it  with 
superb,  indifferent  hands  and  was  himself  van- 
quished by  it ;  and  in  the  smoke  and  dust  of  de- 
feat his  noble  figure  went  down  as  if  some 
strange  meteor  had  shot  from  the  dark  blue  to 
the  very  bowels  of  the  globe.  After  forty  years 
of  toil  in  his  hermitage,  he  left  only  six  volumes, 
nearly  all  masterpieces,  but  not  masterpieces  for 
the  million. 

Flaubert,  as  Saintsbury  justly  points  out, 
occupied  "  a  very  singular  middle  position  be- 
tween romanticism  and  naturalism,  between  the 
theory  of  literary  art,  which  places  the  ideal- 
izing of  merely  observed  facts  first  of  all,  and  is 
sometimes  not  too  careful  about  the  theory 
which  places  the  observation  first  if  not  also 
last,  and  is  sometimes  ostentatiously  careless 
of  any  idealizing  whatsoever."  His  was  a 
realism  of  a  vastly  superior  sort  to  that  of  his 
disciples.  The  profound  philosophic  bias  of  his 
mind  enabled  him  to  pierce  behind  appearances, 
and  while  his  surfaces  are  extraordinary  in 
finish,  exactitude,  and  detail,  the  aura  of  things 
and  persons  is  never  wanting.  His  visualizing 
power  has  never  been  excelled,  not  even  by 
Balzac,  —  a  stroke  or  two  and  a  man  or  woman 
peers  out  from  behind  the  types.  He  ambushed 
^17 


OVERTONES 

himself  in  the  impersonal,  and  thus  his  criticism 
of  life  seems  hard,  cold,  and  cruel  to  those 
readers  who  look  for  the  occasional  amiable 
fillip  of  Gautier,  Fielding,  Thackeray,  and  Dick- 
ens. This  frigid  withdrawal  of  self  behind  the 
screen  of  his  art  gave  him  all  the  more  freedom 
to  set  moving  his  puppets ;  it  is  this  quality  that 
caused  him  to  be  the  only  naturalist  to  receive 
mercy  from  Brunetiere's  remorseless  pen.  Those 
who  mortise  the  cracks  in  their  imagination 
with  current  romanticism,  Flaubert  will  never 
captivate.  He  seems  too  remote ;  he  regards  his 
characters  too  dispassionately.  This  objectivity 
is  carried  to  dangerous  lengths  in  Sentimental 
Education,  for  the  book  is  minor  in  tone,  without 
much  exciting  incident  —  exciting  in  the  Dumas 
or  Stevenson  sense  —  and  is  inordinately  long. 
Five  hundred  pages  seem  too  much  by  half  to 
be  devoted  to  a  young  man  who  does  not  know 
his  own  mind.  Yet  Frederic  Moreau  is  a  man 
you  are  sure  to  meet  on  your  way  home.  He  is 
born  in  great  numbers  and  in  every  land,  and 
his  middle  name  is  Mediocrity.  Only  the  golden 
mean  of  his  gifts  has  not  brought  him  happi- 
ness. He  has  some  money,  and  was  born  of  mid- 
dle-class parents  in  the  provinces.  His  mother's 
hope,  he  is  sent  to  Paris  to  the  schools,  and  has 
just  taken  his  bachelor  degree  when  the  book 
begins.  On  the  steamboat  bound  for  Nogent- 
sur-Seine,  Frederic  meets  Arnoux,  the  art  dealer, 
—  an  admirably  drawn  personality,  —  and  falls  in 
238 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

love  with  Madame  Arnoux.  That  love — the 
leading  motive  of  the  work  —  proves  his  ruin, 
and  it  is  his  one  pure  love ;  a  sample  of  Flau- 
bert's irony,  who  refuses  to  be  satisfied  with  the 
conventional  minor  moralities  and  our  conven- 
tional disposition  of  events.  Frederic  goes  home, 
but  cannot  forget  Madame  Arnoux.  He  is  ro- 
mantic, rather  silly,  good-hearted,  and  hopelessly 
weak.  Like  the  sound  of  a  firm,  clanging  chord 
his  character  is  indicated  at  the  outset  and  there 
is  little  later  development.  As  the  flow  of  some 
sluggish  river  through  flat  lands,  oozing  banks, 
and  neat  embankments,  Frederic's  life  canalizes 
in  leisurely  fashion.  He  loses  his  fortune,  he  in- 
herits another,  he  goes  back  to  Paris,  he  lives 
in  Bohemia  —  such  a  real  Bohemia — and  he 
frequents  the  salons  of  the  wealthy.  He  en- 
counters fraud,  meanness,  hypocrisy,  rapacity,  on 
every  side,  and  like  Rastignac  is  a  bit  of  a 
snob.  He  is  fond  of  women,  but  a  constitu- 
tional timidity  prevents  him  from  reaping  any 
sort  of  success  with  them,  for  he  is  always 
afraid  of  some  one  "  coming  in."  When  he 
does  assert  himself,  he  fears  the  sound  of  his 
own  voice,  yet  in  the  duel  with  Cisy  —  one  of 
the  most  superbly  satirical  set  pieces  in  any 
literature  —  he  is  seemingly  brave.  His  rela- 
tions with  La  Marechale  are  wonderfully  set 
forth ;  he  is  her  dupe,  yet  a  dupe  with  eyes 
wide  open  and  without  the  power  of  retaliation. 
Infirmity  of  will  allied  to  a  charming  person, 
239 


OVERTONES 

this  young  man  is  a  memorable  portrait.  He 
is  not  the  hero,  for  the  book  is  without  one, 
just  as  it  is  plotless  and  apparently  motiveless. 
Elimination  is  practised  unceasingly,  yet  the 
broadest  effects  are  secured ;  the  apparent 
looseness  of  construction  vanishes  on  a  second 
reading.  Almost  fugal  in  treatment  is  the 
development  of  episodes,  and  while  the  rhythms 
are  elliptical,  large,  irregular  —  rhythm  there 
always  is — the  unrelated,  unfinished,  unrounded, 
decomposed  semblance  to  life  is  all  the  while 
cunningly  preserved.  What  Mr.  James  would 
call  the  "  figure  in  the  carpet,"  the  decorative, 
the  thematic  pattern,  is  never  lost,  the  assonant 
web  being  exquisitely  spun.  The  whole  book 
floats  in  the  air  ;  it  is  a  miracle  work.  It  is  full 
of  the  clangor  and  buzz  of  Time's  loom. 

For  me  Rosalie  Arnoux  is  the  unique  attrac- 
tion. Henry  James  calls  her  a  failure  —  spirit- 
ually. She  is  one  of  the  most  charming  portraits 
in  French  fiction,  and  yet  a  perfectly  virtuous 
woman.  The  aroma  of  her  character  pervades 
the  pages  of  this  wonderful  "  encyclopaedia  of 
life."  What  shall  I  tell  you  of  the  magical  de- 
scriptions of  the  ball  at  the  Alhambra  and  other 
masked  balls  at  La  Marechale's ;  of  the  duel ;  of 
the  street  fighting  during  the  revolution  of  '48 ; 
of  the  cynical  journalist,  Hussonet,  a  type  for 
all  times;  of  the  greedy  Des  Lauriers;  of  peevish 
Senecal ;  of  good-hearted  Dussardier ;  of  Pel- 
lerin,  who  reads  all  the  works  on  aesthetics  ex- 
240 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

tant  so  as  to  paint  beautifully ;  of  Mile.  Vatnaz, 
skinny,  slender,  amorous,  and  enigmatic  ?  What 
shall  I  say  of  M.  Roque,  of  Louise,  of  the  actor 
Delmar,  who  turns  his  profile  to  his  audiences ; 
of  Madame  Dambreuse  and  her  sleek  infidelities ; 
of  her  avaricious  husband  ;  of  Frederic's  foolish 
mother,  so  like  himself ;  of  Regimbart,  formi- 
dable, thirsty  Regimbart,  with  his  oaths,  his  daily 
cafe-route,  and  his  magnificent  air  of  bravado  ? 
The  list  is  not  large,  but  every  figure  is  painted 
by  a  master.  And  the  vanity,  the  futility,  the 
barrenness  of  it  all !  It  is  the  philosophy  of 
disenchantment,  and  about  the  book  hangs  the 
inevitable  atmosphere  of  defeat,  of  mortification, 
of  unheroic  resignation.  It  is  life,  commonplace, 
quotidian  life,  and  truth  is  stamped  on  its  portals. 
All  is  vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit.  The  tragedy 
of  the  petty  has  never  before  been  so  mockingly, 
so  menacingly,  so  absolutely  displayed.  An  un- 
happy book,  you  say  !  Yes  ;  and  proves  nothing 
except  that  life  is  but  a  rope  of  sand.  Read  it 
if  you  care  for  art  in  its  most  quintessentialized 
form,  but  if  you  are  better  pleased  with  the 
bravery  and  show  of  things  external,  avoid  this 
novel,  I  beseech  you,  for  it  is  as  bitter  in  the 
mouth  as  a  page  torn  from  Ecclesiastes. 

"  And  thus  it  is  that  Flaubert  .  .  .  became  a 
sort  of  monk  of  literature,  shut  away  from  the 
world,  solitary  and  morose,  beholding  humanity 
with  horror,  with  repulsion,  with  irony,  with  sar- 
casm, with  an  evil  laugh  sadder  than  tears,  and 
r  241 


OVERTONES 

casting  upon  mankind  what  are  called  glances 
of  pity  —  in  other  words,  pitiless  glances,  .  .  . 
just  as  a  friar  passes  a  life  of  contemplation  and 
meditation,  saying  to  himself  that  God  is  great 
and  that  men  are  small,  so  he  spent  almost  the 
whole  of  a  fairly  long  life  saying  to  himself 
again  and  again  that  men  are  small  and  that  art 
is  great,  scorning  the  one  and  serving  the  other 
with  an  equal  fervor  and  an  equal  ardor  of  un- 
compromising devotion." 

Emile  Faguet  in  his  excellent  monograph  on 
Flaubert  —  in  Les  Grands  Ecrivains  Francais  — 
thus  summed  up  his  life.  Paul  Bourget  called 
his  works  "  a  manual  of  nihilism,"  and  declared 
that  in  each  sentence  of  Flaubert's  "  inheres  a 
hidden  force."  More  significant  still  is  Bourget's 
anecdote  illustrating  Flaubert's  almost  insane 
devotion  to  style. 

"  He  was  very  proud,"  relates  Bourget,  "  of 
furnishing  his  story  of  Herodias  with  the  adverb 
altemativement,  —  alternately.  This  word  whose 
two  accents  on  ter  and  ti  give  it  a  loose  swing, 
seemed  to  him  to  render  concrete  and  almost 
perceptible  the  march  of  the  two  slaves  who  in 
turn  carried  the  head  of  St.  John  the  Baptist." 
And  in  the  preface  by  Flaubert  to  Dernieres 
Chansons  de  Louis  Bouilhet  may  be  found  his 
startling  yet  rational  theory  that  good  prose 
alone  can  stand  the  test  of  being  read  aloud,  for 
"  a  well-constructed  phrase  adapts  itself  to  the 
rhythm  of  respiration." 

242 


BEETHOVEN    OF   FRENCH    PROSE 

"While  remaining  itself  obscure,"  writes 
George  Moore  of  L'Education  Sentimentale, 
"  this  novel  has  given  birth  to  a  numerous  litera- 
ture. The  Rougon-Macquart  series  is  nothing 
but  L'Education  Sentimentale  rewritten  into 
twenty  volumes  by  a  prodigious  journalist  — 
twenty  huge  balloons  which  bob  about  the 
streets,  sometimes  getting  clear  of  the  house- 
tops. Maupassant  cut  it  into  numberless  walk- 
ing sticks ;  Goncourt  took  the  descriptive  pas- 
sages and  turned  them  into  Passy  rhapsodies. 
The  book  has  been  a  treasure  cavern  known  to 
forty  thieves,  whence  all  have  found  riches  and 
fame.  The  original  spirit  has  proved  too  strong 
for  general  consumption,  but,  watered  and  pre- 
pared, it  has  had  the  largest  sale  ever  known." 

Some  one  in  Henry  Labouchere's  London 
Truth  wrote  this  of  the  author  of  Boule  de 
Suif  :  "  Guy  de  Maupassant's  death  has  revived 
an  interest  in  his  works.  He  was  admittedly 
the  son  of  Flaubert,  from  whom  he  inherited  his 
sanguine  temperament,  ruddy  complexion,  the 
full  starting  veins  in  his  temples,  the  bull  neck, 
and  the  flaw  in  his  nervous  system.  Flaubert 
was  subject  to  epileptic  fits,  and  Guy  de  Mau- 
passant died  of  general  paralysis,  preceded  by 
madness,  before  he  had  reached  middle  age. 
As  a  writer  he  was  with  ease  what  Flaubert 
tried  to  be  by  great  efforts,  and  something  more, 
he  having  a  deeper  insight  into  what  seem  the 
ordinary  circumstances  of  life." 
243 


OVERTONES 

The  Beethoven  of  French  prose  was,  every 
one  knows,  whimsical  and  fastidious  to  a  degree 
with  his  style.  Be  it  true  or  not,  one  of  his 
friends  relates  that  he  found  him  one  day  stand- 
ing in  front  of  a  high  music  desk,  on  which 
stood  a  paragraph  written  in  large  letters. 
"  What  are  you  doing  there  ? "  said  his  friend. 
"  Scanning  these  words  because  they  don't 
sound  well."  Flaubert  would  spend  a  day  over 
a  sentence  because  it  did  not  sound  well,  and 
every  sentence  he  sent  to  press  was  equally 
closely  analyzed.  Well,  why  not !  If  modern 
prose  were  written  for  the  ear  as  well  as  the 
eye,  chanted  and  scanned,  it  would  be  more 
sonorous,  more  rhythmic,  in  a  word,  more  artistic. 
I  believe  the  story,  although  it  does  not  appear 
in  Tarvers's  book  on  Flaubert.  It  is  glorious, 
true  or  false ;  it  fixes  an  ideal  for  young  writers. 


II 

THE   TWO   SALAMAIBOS 

After  doggedly  working  like  a  galley  slave 
for  six  years  Gustave  Flaubert  published  Sa- 
lammbo  in  Paris  near  the  close  of  1862.  He 
was  then  forty-one  years  old,  in  the  prime  of 
his  laborious  and  picturesque  life,  recluse,  man 
of  the  world,  traveller,  and  one  of  the  most  de- 
voted of  sons.  In  1849,  with  Maxime  du  Camp 
■ — who  later  imprudently  lifted  the  curtain  on 
244 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

the  sad  secret  of  his  friend's  life  —  Flaubert 
made  a  journey  up  the  Nile,  through  Egypt, 
Nubia,  by  the  Red  Sea,  through  Palestine  and 
Syria,  into  Cyprus,  Rhodes,  Asia  Minor,  Turkey 
in  Europe,  and  Greece.  Before  Dr.  Schliemann, 
the  great  Flaubert  dug  in  Mycenae,  and  from 
the  "trenches  of  Herculaneum,  on  to  the  rocks 
of  Cape  Misenum,"  he  explored,  furiously  ob- 
sessed by  a  fantastic  idea.  In  1850  we  find  him 
in  Phoenicia,  a  wanderer  and  an  excavator  of 
buried  pasts.  During  1858  he  went  to  Tunis, 
and  to  the  ruins  of  Carthage.  From  these  delv- 
ings  was  born  the  epical  romance  of  Salammbo, 
a  book  full  of  sonorous  lines  like  the  sweeping 
harmonies  of  Wagner,  a  book  of  mad  dreams, 
blood,  lust,  cruelty,  and  love  faithful  unto  death. 
Following  the  publication  of  this  story  Flau- 
bert, a  lion  in  literary  Paris  since  his  artistic  and 
legal  victories  with  Madame  Bovary,  found 
himself  the  centre  of  many  attacks  by  historians, 
archaeologists,  pedants,  and  the  critical  small  fry 
of  the  town.  To  one  adversary  the  blond  giant 
of  Croisset  deigned  a  reply.  It  was  M.  Froeh- 
ner,  then  editor  of  the  Revue  Contemporaine,  and 
an  expert  in  archaeology  —  that  is,  an  expert  un- 
til Flaubert  answered  his  arguments  and  literally 
blew  them  off  the  globe.  He  admitted  having 
created  Salammbo ;  that  the  aqueduct  which 
Matho  and  Spendius  traversed  the  night  Sa- 
lammbo first  saw  the  Zaimph  was  also  an  inven- 
tion; that  Hanno  was  really  crucified  in  Sardinia; 
245 


OVERTONES 

and  a  few  other  minor  changes.  Then  to  Froeh- 
ner's  animadversions  he  gave  text  for  text, 
authority  for  authority,  and  when  a  question  of 
topography  arose,  Flaubert  clinched  his  answer 
with :  "  Is  it  to  shine  by  trying  to  make  the 
dunces  believe  that  I  do  not  distinguish  between 
Cappadocia  and  Asia  Minor  ?  But  I  know  it, 
sir ;  I  have  seen  it,  I  have  taken  walks  in  it." 

If  the  question  was  consecrating  apes  to  the 
moon,  or  whether  beards  covered  in  bags  in  sign 
of  mourning  are  in  Cahen  [Ezekiel  xxiv.  17]  and 
on  the  chins  of  Egyptian  colossi  —  any  doubtful 
fact,  be  it  ethnic,  archaeologic,  ethic,  aesthetic,  or 
historic,  was  met  by  a  volley  of  answers,  a  flood 
of  learning,  a  wealth  of  reading,  that  simply 
overwhelmed  his  antagonist.  The  affair  was 
tremendously  diverting  for  the  lookers-on,  but  it 
is  to  be  doubted  if  art  was  benefited.  For  two 
dusty  German  professors  such  a  controversy 
might  have  proved  useful ;  in  it  Flaubert  simply 
wasted  his  glorious  powers. 

Salammbo,  despite  its  erudition,  is  a  love  story, 
original  in  design,  set  in  a  strange  environment, 
a  love  story  withal.  The  accusations  of  a  too  im- 
personal style  and  of  a  lack  of  human  interest  do 
not  altogether  hold  when  the  wonderfully  vital 
portrait  of  Salammbo  is  studied ;  and  the  fiery 
Matho,  the  leper  Hanno,  Hamilcar,  stern,  but 
loving  his  little  son  Hannibal  like  the  apple  of  his 
eye  ;  the  wily  Spendius,  the  fanatical  high  priest 
—  here  is  a  group  of  living  humans,  animated  by 
246 


BEETHOVEN    OF   FRENCH    PROSE 

the  same  passions  as  ours,  a  delineation  almost 
cruel  in  its  clearness,  and  all  surrounded  by  an 
atmosphere  of  realistic  beauty  that  bespeaks  the 
art  of  its  creator.  The  style,  the  superb  ca- 
denced  prose  which  passes  us  in  v  processional 
splendor  or  else  penetrates  the  soul  like  a  strange 
perfume,  this  style  so  sharp  in  outline,  so  canorous 
to  the  ear,  a  style  at  once  pictorial  and  musical, — 
to  this  unique  verbal  presentation  I  cannot  accord 
justice,  Flaubert  is  first  the  musician  and  then 
the  psychologist. 

Ernest  Reyer  was  born  in  1823.  His  family 
name  was  Rey,  and  he  hails  from  Marseilles. 
A  very  old  but  active  man,  Reyer  is  librarian  of 
the  Opera,  and  is,  or  was,  critic  of  the  Journal 
des  Debats,  a  position  formerly  held  by  Berlioz. 
In  1876  he  succeeded  Felicien  David  as  a 
member  of  the  Institute.  These  two  composers 
exerted  the  major  influence  upon  the  work  of 
Reyer.  He  imitated  David  in  his  choice  of 
Eastern  subjects  and  Berlioz  in  his  modern  in- 
strumentation. Beginning  as  a  reformer,  writ- 
ing music  that  was  classed  as  too  advanced, 
Reyer  lived  to  hear  himself  called  a  reactionary 
—  and  with  justice,  for  in  his  setting  to  Salammbo 
he  harks  back  to  Meyerbeer,  Halevy,  and 
Felicien  David.  The  mighty  wave  of  Wag- 
ner had  no  attraction  for  this  Frenchman 
until  he  heard  the  Tristan  Prelude  in  1884. 
From  that  time  he  became  an  ardent  preacher 
247 


OVERTONES 

of  the  faith  Wagnerian.  He  modelled  his  orches- 
tration after  Wagner,  wrote  of  his  music  in  his 
critical  journal,  and  became  known  as  one  of 
the  men  in  Paris  who  could  be  counted  upon  for 
the  Bayreuth  propaganda. 

Yet  in  practice  Reyer  seems  timid.  Not  pos- 
sessing much  musical  individuality,  he  attempted 
what  most  unoriginal  men  attempt,  he  tempo- 
rized, became  a  composer  of  compromises  and 
an  eclectic.  So  in  his  music,  even  in  his  best 
work,  Sigurd,  the  want  of  a  strong,  individual 
style  is  noticeable.  As  early  as  1876  selections 
from  Sigurd  had  been  given  in  concert  by  Pas- 
deloup.  The  theme  of  the  opera  is  almost 
identical  with  Wagner's  Gotterdammerung,  the 
book  of  which  was  finished  in  1853.  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  Reyer  speaks  of  his  early  music  as 
coming  too  late  after  David  and  his  later  music 
too  soon  after  Wagner  ?  Berlioz  produced  his 
Erostrate  at  Baden-Baden,  and  Bizet  said  that 
La  Statue  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  operas 
given  in  France  for  two  decades.  With  all  his 
half  successes  —  for  Sigurd  is  in  the  repertory 
of  the  Paris  Opera — Reyer  cannot  be  con- 
sidered as  a  strong  man  in  any  way.  He  has 
imitated  Gluck  and  Wagner,  Berlioz  and  Wag- 
ner. Years  ago,  after  hearing  Sigurd,  I  called 
him  "  le  petit  Berlioz,"  but  I  now  consider  the 
phrase  a  pleasing  exaggeration.  Berlioz  was  a 
master  of  orchestration.  Reyer  is  not.  And  he 
has  nothing  new  to  say.  We  all  recognize 
248 


BEETHOVEN    OF   FRENCH    PROSE 

those  impotent  phrases,  hollow  and  sonorous  as 
the  wind  in  a  tall  chimney,  that  are  plastered 
over  his  scores.  Those  cries  "  O  Ciel !  "  "  Je 
t'aime  !  "  and  "  Horreur  !  "  are  they  not  idiotic 
in  librettos  and  music !  Here  is  the  musical 
phrase  cliche  in  all  its  banal  perfection,  and  the 
thunderous  choruses  a  la  Meyerbeer  which 
punctuate  Reyer's  scenes  weary  the  nerves, 
beat  down  our  sympathies,  and  stun  our  ears. 

Sigurd  is  the  one  opera  that  betrays  fancy, 
science,  and  a  feeling  for  characterization.  I 
have  enjoyed  parts  of  it  at  the  Paris  Opera,  but 
wondered  why  the  composer  had  selected  the 
subject.  Brunhild  lies  asleep  on  the  fiery 
mountain,  situated  in  Iceland.  Sigurd,  Gunther, 
and  Hagen  swear  friendship,  and  Sigurd  puts 
on  the  tarn-cap,  winning  Hilda,  as  she  is  called, 
for  Gunther.  There  is  the  episode  of  the  naked 
sword,  and  later  Sigurd  is  slain  by  Gunther. 
The  ballet  is  very  pretty,  and  Wagner's  influence 
is  in  evidence.  Sigurd,  though  produced  in 
1884,  was  really  composed  before  Gotterdam- 
merung.     Again  Reyer  came  too  late. 

In  1889  he  finished  the  score  of  Salammbo. 
It  was  first  sung  at  the  Theatre  de  la  Monnaie, 
Brussels,  February  10,  1890,  with  Rose  Caron, 
Sellier,  Bouvet,  Vergnet,  and  Renaud  in  the 
cast.  Two  years  later,  May  23,  1892,  Paris 
listened  to  the  opera  with  Rose  Caron,  Albert 
Saleza,  Vaquet,  Delmas,  and  Renaud  in  the 
production.  Wednesday  night,  March  20,  1901, 
249 


OVERTONES 

in  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House,  New  York 
viewed  its  spectacle,  for  spectacle  Salammbo  is, 
spectacle  and  naught  else.  The  cast  is  given 
as  a  matter  of  record :  Lucienne  Breval,  Sa- 
lammbo ;  Saleza,  Matho  ;  Salignac,  High  Priest ; 
Journet,  Narr'  Havas ;  Gilibert,  Giscon ;  Scotti, 
Hamilcar;  Sizes,  Spendius;  Dufriche,  Autha- 
rite,  and  Carrie  Bridewell,  Taanach.  Luigi 
Mancinelli  conducted.  The  production  was  an 
elaborate  and  costly  one. 

Camille  du  Locle,  who  butchered  Flaubert's 
book  to  make  a  holiday  for  the  Parisians,  ac- 
complished his  task  successfully  according  to 
his  lights  —  theatrical  lights.  He  altered  the 
story,  suppressed  much  of  its  humanity,  and 
eliminated  the  magnificent  picturesqueness  of 
the  romance.  Du  Locle  divides  his  scene  plots 
thus  :  — 

Act  I.    The  Gardens  of  Hamilcar's  Palace. 

Act  II.    The  Temple  of  Tanit. 

Act  III.  First  Scene.  The  Temple  of  Moloch. 
Second  Scene.    The  Terrace  of  Salammbo. 

Act  IV.  First  Scene.  The  Camp  of  the  Mer- 
cenaries. Second  Scene.  The  Tent  of  Matho. 
Third  Scene.    The  Field  of  Battle. 

Act  V.    The  Forum. 

I  need  hardly  tell  you  the  original  story  — 
how  Matho,  the  fierce  Libyan  warrior,  first  saw 
the  lovely  daughter  of  Hamilcar ;  how  he  re- 
solved to  win  her  ;  the  rape  of  the  sacred  veil  of 
Tanit,  called  the  Zaimph,  and  Salammbo's  terror 
250 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

at  seeing  it  shroud  the  person  of  a  Barbarian  in 
her  sleeping  chamber;  the  pursuit,  the  escape, 
the  return  of  Hamilcar  and  the  resolve  of  Sa- 
lammbo to  win  back  for  Carthage  its  holy  veil. 
Who  can  describe  after  Flaubert  the  massed 
shock  of  armies,  the  pillage  of  cities  and  the 
crucifixion  of  the  lions !  To  the  march  of  his  sono- 
rous sentences  we  move  through  strange  scenes, 
scenes  of  repulsive  horror,  slaughtered  men  and 
beasts,  and  the  odor  of  sun-baked  carcasses,  over 
which  hover  obscene  winged  creatures  seeking 
carrion. 

Salammbo,  after  a  hieratic  ceremonial  with 
the  huge  sacred  serpent  of  the  temple  —  Rodin 
alone  might  execute  this  episode  in  shivering 
marble  —  visits  the  tent  of  Matho,  recovers  the 
Zaimph,  but  meets  with  an  accident.  She  dis- 
covers her  love  for  the  Mercenary  chief,  who 
justly  besieges  Carthage  for  the  pay  of  his  sol- 
diers, and  she  snaps  the  gold  anklet-chain  that 
daughters  of  patricians  wore  in  those  times. 
Matho  is  captured,  tortured  by  having  to  run 
the  gantlet  of  Carthage's  enraged  populace, 
and  finally  drops  before  the  terraced  throne  upon 
which  sits  Salammbo  beside  her  affianced  hus- 
band, Narr'  Havas,  the  Numidian.  The  poor 
hunted  wretch,  over  whose  red  flesh  the  skin 
hangs  in  bloody  strips,  dies,  and  his  heart  is  cut 
out  before  the  eyes  of  Salammbo.  She  takes 
poison  from  a  goblet  handed  her  by  the  expect- 
ant bridegroom.  All  who  touch  the  veil  of 
251 


OVERTONES 

Tanit  must  perish.  So  is  it  decreed  by  the  law 
and  the  prophets  ! 

M.  du  Locle  has  altered  this  significant  ending 
by  making  Salammbo  stab  herself,  and  then 
Matho  —  by  the  usual  "  frenzied  and  super- 
human effort"  —  breaks  his  bonds  and  carves 
himself  into  eternity.  It  is  sweetly  gory  and  melo- 
dramatic, this  ending.  Of  course,  the  trip  through 
the  aqueduct  is  omitted  and  the  theft  of  the 
Zaimph  takes  place  before  Salammbo's  eyes. 
This  is  in  the  second  act.  The  librettist,  with 
memories  of  Faust,  causes  Matho  to  make  an 
imaginary  circle  through  which  it  would  be  im- 
pious to  penetrate.  Incidentally  he  wooes  the 
young  lady  with  true  Gallic  ardor.  Yet  this  act, 
far  removed  as  it  is  from  the  book,  is  the  best 
of  the  five. 

What  follows  is  of  no  consequence  ;  the  coun- 
cil chamber  is  lugged  in  for  its  picture,  and  the 
spectacle  of  Salammbo  dressing  on  a  terrace 
under  the  rays  of  a  Carthaginian  moon,  as  round 
as  a  silver  buckler,  does  not  advance  the  action 
materially.  The  camp  and  battle  scenes  do 
credit  to  the  taste  of  the  decorator,  though  they 
are  meaningless.  But  in  Matho' s  tent,  where 
Salammbo  presently  arrives,  Reyer  strikes  fire 
for  the  first  time.  His  hero  and  heroine  have 
thus  far  been  smothered  by  processions  of  chant- 
ing priests,  by  mobs  of  soldiery,  by  ballets  and 
by  monster  choruses.  Here  the  man  and  the 
woman,  face  to  face,  bare  their  souls,  and  the 
252 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

music,  not  so  passionate  or  so  desperate  as  Val- 
entine and  Raoul's  duo  in  the  fourth  act  of  Les 
Huguenots,  is  yet  sincere  and  touching.  After 
that  the  opera  oozes  away  in  mere  pantomime. 
There  is  a  fall  down  a  series  of  lofty  staircases, 
which  is  not  high  art. 

I  could  only  distinguish  two  well-defined  lead- 
ing-motives in  the  partition.  One  came  from 
Gounod's  Romeo  and  Juliet,  fourth  act,  the  other 
is  a  slight  deviation  from  Tristan's  cry  in  Act 
III :  "O  Isolde."  For  the  rest,  I  have  a  vague 
remembrance  of  cantilena  without  melody,  finales 
without  climax,  a  thin,  noisy,  shallow,  and  irritat- 
ing stream  of  orchestration  and  a  vocal  score 
that  either  screamed  or  roared.  The  harmonic 
scheme  is  dull  and  there  is  little  rhythmic  va- 
riety. Reyer,  as  I  said  before,  has  few  musical 
ideas,  and  he  does  not  conceal  this  deficiency 
by  the  graceful  externals  of  a  brilliant  instru- 
mentation. As  well  meant  as  was  Reyer's  ad- 
miration for  the  immortal  story,  a  story  that  will 
outlive  the  mock  antiquities  of  Bulvver,  Ebers, 
and  Sienkiewicz,  the  French  critic  and  composer 
was  not  the  man  to  give  it  a  musical  setting. 
Wagner  or  Verdi — none  other  —  could  have 
made  of  his  glowing  Oriental  prose-poem  a 
music-drama  of  vital  power  and  exquisite  color- 
ing. 

It  is   a  holy  and  wholesome   thing   to  visit 
the  graves  of  genius,  for  the  memories  aroused 
253 


OVERTONES 

may  serve  as  an  inspiration  and  a  consolation 
in  the  spiritually  arid  tracts  of  daily  and  dole- 
ful existence.  But  as  the  emotions  aroused  at 
the  sight  of  great  men's  relics  are  profound  only 
to  the  individual  —  they  seldom  make  interest- 
ing reading  — ■  so  more  than  a  record  of  the  fact 
that  I  have  visited  Rouen  several  times  to  view 
the  tomb  of  Gustave  Flaubert  is  not  of  burning 
importance.  I  cannot  help  protesting,  however, 
at  the  tardy  official  recognition  accorded  one  of 
the  greatest  prose  masters  France  can  boast,  and 
one  of  the  great  world  novelists.  In  the  Sol- 
ferino  Gardens  there  is  the  marble  memorial  by 
the  sculptor  Chapu,  and  up  on  the  heights  of 
the  Monumental  Cemetery  lie  his  remains  in  the 
Flaubert  family  plot,  not  very  far  from  the  Joan 
of  Arc  monument.  The  Government  has  done 
nothing,  though  it  has  erected  marble  quarries 
to  mediocrities  not  worthy  to  unlatch  the  shoes 
of  Flaubert.  Guy  de  Maupassant  is  remem- 
bered in  the  Solferino  Gardens  by  a  statue  vis- 
a-vis to  the  master  whom  he  loved  and  to  whom 
he  owed  so  much.  At  Paris  another  loving  me- 
morial stands  in  the  Pare  Monceau ;  yet  for 
Flaubert,  a  giant  when  compared  to  the  un- 
happy writer  of  the  Contes,  there  is  nothing  — 
not  even  a  commemorative  tablet. 

The  least  reparation  for  this  neglect  that  the 

French  Government  can  offer  is  the   purchase 

and   preservation   of   the   little   house   in  which 

Madame  Bovary  was  composed  with  such  pain- 

254 


BEETHOVEN  OF  FRENCH  PROSE 

ful  travail.  It  still  stands,  though  fast  crum- 
bling into  decay,  on  the  bank  of  the  Seine  at 
Croisset  about  half  an  hour  below  Rouen.  The 
paternal  house  has  vanished,  and  occupying  part 
of  the  little  park  is  a  dismantled  manufactory. 
Abbe  Prevost  is  said  to  have  written  Manon 
Lescaut  in  the  old  house  —  at  least,  Flaubert 
believed  the  story. 

The  faithful  Colange,  for  twenty  years  servi- 
tor in  the  Flaubert  household,  keeps  a  small 
cafe-  near  his  former  home,  and  is  always  ready 
to  talk  of  the  master  and  of  his  mother,  Madame 
Flaubert.  For  two  seasons  I  vainly  tried  to  get 
from  Colange  a  photograph  of  this  mother.  To 
me  the  mothers  of  great  men  are  of  extraordi- 
nary interest.  No  money  could  tempt  the  old 
man,  though  he  might  have  had  the  picture  re- 
produced and  sold  the  copies. 

With  his  phrase  uttered  at  Flaubert's  grave, 
M.  Francois  Coppee  fastened  more  firmly  to 
history  the  name  of  that  noble  artist,  "The 
Beethoven  of  French  Prose." 


255 


VII 

VERDI    AND    BOITO 

Drama  is  relentlessly  encroaching  upon  the 
domain  of  music.  In  Falstaff,  the  most  note- 
worthy achievement  since  Die  Meistersinger, 
we  get  something  which  for  want  of  a  better 
title  one  may  call  lyric  comedy.  But  in  form 
it  is  novel.  It  is  not  opera  buff  a ;  nor  yet  is  it 
opera  comique  in  the  French  sense ;  in  fact  it 
shows  a  marked  deviation  from  its  prototypes ; 
even  the  elaborate  system  of  Wagnerian  leading 
motives  is  not  employed.  It  is  a  new  Verdi  we 
hear  ;  not  the  Verdi  of  II  Trovatore,  La  Traviata, 
or  A'fda,  but  a  Verdi  brimful  of  the  joy  of  life, 
sophisticated,  yet  nai've.  A  marvellous  com- 
pound is  this  musical  comedy,  in  which  the 
music  follows  the  text,  and  no  concessions  are 
made  to  the  singers  or  to  the  time-honored  con- 
ventions of  the  operatic  stage.  Verdi  has  thrown 
overboard  old  forms  and  planted  his  victorious 
standard  in  the  country  discovered  by  Mozart 
and  conquered  by  Wagner.  A  marvellous  old 
man  indeed ! 

The  play's  the  thing  to  catch  the  conscience 
of  the  composer  to-day.  The  action  in  Falstaff 
256 


VERDI    AND    BOITO 

is  almost  as  rapid  as  if  the  text  were  spoken ; 
and  the  orchestra,  the  wittiest  and  most  spar- 
kling riant  orchestra  I  ever  heard,  —  comments 
upon  the  monologue  and  dialogue  of  the  book. 
When  the  speech  becomes  rhetorical,  so  does 
the  orchestra.  It  is  heightened  speech,  and 
instead  of  melody  of  the  antique,  formal  pat- 
tern we  hear  the  endless  melody  which  Wagner 
employs.  But  Verdi's  speech  is  his  own  and 
does  not  savor  of  Wagner.  If  the  ideas  are  not 
developed  or  do  not  assume  vaster  proportions, 
it  is  because  of  their  character.  They  could  not 
be  so  treated  without  doing  violence  to  the 
sense  of  proportion.  Classic  purity  in  expres- 
sion, Latin  exuberance,  joyfulness,  and  an  inex- 
pressibly delightful  atmosphere  of  irresponsible 
youthfulness  and  gayety  are  all  in  this  charming 
score. 

We  get  a  touch  of  the  older  style  in  the  con- 
certed numbers,  but  the  handling  is  very  free 
and  the  content  Verdian  and  modern.  Here 
are  variety,  color,  freshness,  earnestness,  insou- 
ciance, and  numberless  quaint  conceits.  The 
tempo  is  like  an  arrow-shot  from  the  bow  of 
a  classic-featured  archer,  whose  arrows  have 
been  steeped  in  the  burning  lake  of  romanti- 
cism. There  is  melodic  repetition  of  phrases, 
but  it  is  more  in  the  manner  of  Gretry  than 
Wagner.  I  have  called  Falstaff  a  pendant  to 
Die  Meistersinger,  and  the  two  works,  directly 
antithetical,  are  both  supreme  products  of  the 
s  257 


OVERTONES 

Gallic  and  Teutonic  lyric  genius.  And  how 
Verdi  escaped  the  current  of  his  younger  years ! 
What  wonderful  adaptability,  what  receptivity, 
what  powers  of  assimilation  !  Some  future  bi- 
ographer will  write  of  The  Three  Styles  of 
Verdi  as  did  de  Lenz  of  Beethoven's  styles ; 
perhaps  he  will  even  increase  the  number. 

Wagner  did  not  shed  his  musical  skin  as  ab- 
solutely as  this  Italian.  Compare  the  young 
and  the  old  Verdi.  In  style  to-day  Falstaff  is 
younger  than  II  Trovatore  half  a  century  ago. 
Think  of  La  donna  e  mobile  and  then  of  the 
fugued  finale  to  Falstaff.  And  remember,  it  is 
not  a  fugato  with  imitative  passages,  nor  the 
fugal  treatment  of  an  ensemble  finale,  but  a  well- 
constructed  fugue  in  eight  real  parts,  with  epi- 
sodes, inversions  of  the  subject,  stretti,  and  even 
a  pedal  point.  It  is  not  so  pleasing  in  effect  as 
the  magnificent  polyphonic  close  of  Die  Meis- 
tersinger,  because  of  its  severely  formal  con- 
struction. It  sounds  as  if  Verdi  had  said,  "  Go 
to  ;  after  all  this  mumming  and  masking  I  will 
show  ye  that  I,  too,  can  be  serious."  So  he 
fugues  the  words  "  Tutto  nel  mondo  e  burlo," 
of  all  words  in  the  world  for  such  a  form ! 
What  a  gay  old  dog  he  must  have  been  !  And 
heaven  knows  what  jokes  he  had  in  store  for 
us,  hidden  in  the  capacious  sleeves  of  his  genius. 
I  am  sorry  that  an  important  engagement  in  the 
Lethean  fields  prevented  von  Biilow  from  being 
present  at  this  Falstaff  performance.  He  had 
258 


VERDI    AND    BOITO 

to  recant  his  opinion  of  the  Manzoni  Requiem ; 
but  after  this  fugue  he  would  have  surely  bent 
the  stubborn  knee  of  pride  and  prostrated  him- 
self before  the  Italian  god  of  music. 

No  one  can  reproach  Verdi  with  lack  of  ideas 
in  Falstaff.  They  are  never  ending.  The 
orchestra  flows  furiously,  like  a  stream  of  quick- 
silver, tossing  up  repartee,  argument,  facts,  am- 
plifying, developing,  and  strengthening  the  text. 
No  melody  ?  Why,  the  opera  is  one  long,  merry 
tune  —  jocund,  blithe,  sweet,  dulcet,  and  sunny. 
Few  moods  of  melancholy,  no  moods  of  mad- 
ness, but  all  gracious  folly  and  fantasy. 

The  Honor  soliloquy  from  Henry  IV,  with 
its  pizzicati  accompaniment  and  its  No!  punctu- 
ated by  a  drum  tap,  is  changed  into  strength 
and  sarcastic  humor.  When  I  Was  a  Page  is 
another  gem,  and  so  is  the  chattering  quartet. 
But  why  enumerate  details  ?  It  is  a  work  of 
which  one  cannot  say  "this  and  this,"  it  is  so 
rich,  so  exuberant,  so  novel,  and  yet  so  learned ; 
little  wonder  then  that  we  marvel.  Verdi's 
musical  scholarship  is  enormous.  He  paints 
delicate,  fairylike  pictures,  using  the  most  deli- 
cate pigments  and  with  the  daintiest  touch  imag- 
inable ;  and  then  he  pens  a  severe  and  truthful 
canon  in  the  second  which  excites  the  admiration 
of  the  scholar.  The  minuet  is  an  echo  of  old 
time,  but  how  superlatives  pale  before  the 
wealth  of  rhythms,  modes,  subtle  tonalities, 
simple  diatonic  effects  contrasted  with  gor- 
259 


OVERTONES 

geous,  sonorous  orchestral  bursts!  And  it  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  both  composer  and  libret- 
tist have  caught  the  true  Shakespearean  note. 
The  corpulent  knight,  despite  his  braggadocio 
humor,  lechery,  and  gluttony,  is  a  gentleman 
born,  although  sadly  run  to  seed  because  of 
sack  and  petticoats.  The  glamour  of  the  revel 
at  Heme's  Oak,  the  street  scene  at  dusk,  with 
the  gossiping  of  the  women,  and  the  clear,  fresh 
air,  —  and  there  is  no  attempt  at  Purcell  mad- 
rigals, English  local  color,  —  all  these  prove 
Verdi's  sympathy ;  also  that  music  is  a  univer- 
sal language  and  that  an  Italian  poet-composer 
may  faithfully  frame  the  story  of  an  English 
dramatist. 

And  with  what  a  light  hand  and  vivacity  of 
speech  Verdi  has  done  it !  Miracles  of  construc- 
tion there  are,  but  the  grim  bones  of  theory  are 
never  exposed.  Even  the  fugue  is  jaunty.  The 
love  element  peeps  archly  out  behind  the  puffed 
mask  of  humor;  the  note  is  never  deep,  just  a 
sigh,  and  it  has  departed  before  you  can  fairly 
grasp  its  beauty.  The  duos  are  all  charming,  and 
—  but  what  boots  idle  cataloguing?  Its  beauties 
should  have  become  patent  to  our  opera-go- 
ing public  and  the  work  a  favorite  long  ago. 
"  Apres  moi,  le  deluge,"  said  the  Wagnerites  of 
the  great  Richard.  "After  Wagner,  Verdi!" 
some  may  explain.  Falstaff  suggests,  of  course, 
Victor  Maurel,  and  our  debt  of  gratitude  for  his 
vital  and  sympathetic  interpretations  is  great, 
260 


VERDI    AND    BOITO 

Is  there  an  actor  on  any  stage  to-day  who 
can  portray  both  the  grossness  of  Falstaff  and 
the  subtlety  of  Iago  ?  I  doubt  it.  Making  all 
due  allowances  for  the  different  art  medium  the 
singing  actor  must  work  in,  despite  the  slight 
exaggeration  of  pose  and  gesture,  Maurel  had 
no  superior,  if  indeed  an  equal,  in  these  two 
roles.  And  then  the  man's  astonishing  versa- 
tility !  What  method,  what  manner  of  training 
has  he  had  ?  Of  what  school  or  schools  is  he 
the  crystallized  product  ?  His  voice,  worn  and 
siccant,  seemed  to  take  on  any  hue  he  desired. 
In  Falstaff,  you  may  remember,  it  was  bullying, 
blandishing,  defiant,  tender,  and  gross ;  full  of 
impure  suggestiveness,  as  jolly  as  a  boon  com- 
panion. And  when  he  sang  "  Quando  ero  pag- 
gio  del  Duca  di  Norfolk,"  how  his  vocal  horizon 
lighted  up  ! 

The  brainlessness  of  Verdi's  music  previous 
to  the  time  when  A'fda  was  composed  should  not 
close  our  eyes  to  the  promise  and  potency  of  that 
same  early  music.  It  is  the  music  of  a  pas- 
sionate Italian  temperament  —  music  hastily  con- 
ceived, still  more  speedily  jotted  down,  and 
tumbled  anyhow  on  the  stage.  Musical  Italy 
before  1880  was  devoted  to  the  voice.  Give  it 
a  plank,  a  dramatic  situation,  an  aria,  and  suc- 
cess pursued  the  composer.  As  for  the  dra- 
matic unities,  the  orchestral  commentary,  the 
welding  of  action,  story,  and  music  —  why,  they 
could  all  go  hang.  Melody,  irrelevant,  fatuous, 
261 


OVERTONES 

trivial  melody,  and  again  melody,  was  the  shib- 
boleth. The  wonder  is  that  an  orchestra  was 
ever  employed  —  except  that  it  made  more  noise 
than  a  piano  player ;  that  costumes  were  ever 
worn  —  only  because  they  looked  braver,  gayer, 
in  the  flare  of  the  footlights  than  street  attire. 
And  most  wonderful  of  all  was  the  expense  of 
a  theatre,  for  to  those  melomaniacs  anything 
but  a  tune  was  a  deterrent  factor.  The  singer 
and  the  song  sung  composed  an  opera.  All 
the  rest  was  sheer  waste  of  material  —  or  Teu- 
tonic madness. 

Verdi's  acquaintance  with  Arrigo  Boi'to  was 
the  turning-point  in  his  career.  He  knew 
Bo'i'to's  far  better  than  he  knew  Wagner's  scores. 
If  he  was  affected  at  all  by  Wagnerism,  it  was 
by  way  of  Boi'to  and  not  at  first  hand.  I  am 
not  prepared  to  deny  that  Verdi  ever  listened 
to  the  Ring,  to  Tristan,  or  to  Die  Meistersinger  in 
its  entirety  sung  by  competent  throats  ;  yet  I  sin- 
cerely doubt  it.  The  Italian's  early  music  is 
full  of  Rossini,  Donizetti,  Bellini,  and  Meyer- 
beer. He  could  not,  being  of  a  receptive  nature, 
have  escaped  Wagner  had  he  known  him  thor- 
oughly. He  was  a  very  suspicious,  proud  old 
man,  —  as  proud  of  I  Due  Foscari  as  of  Ai'da,  — 
and  almost  to  the  day  of  his  death  deprecated 
Wagner's  influence  on  modern  opera.  To  see, 
then,  as  do  many  wise  men  of  music,  Wagner 
peering  sardonically  from  behind  the  lively 
and  exciting  bars  of  Verdi's  later  scores,  is 
262 


VERDI    AND   BOITO 

to  claim  a  clairvoyance   to  which   I  dare  not 
pretend. 

Take  any  of  Verdi's  operas  previous  to  those 
of  1850,  and  what  do  we  get?  A  string  of  pas- 
sionate tunes  bracketed  in  the  conventional 
cavatina-cabaletta  style ;  little  attempt  at  follow- 
ing the  book  —  such  awful  books  !  —  and  the 
orchestra,  a  huge  strumming  machine,  strum- 
ming without  color,  appositeness,  rhyme,  or  rea- 
son. And  then  the  febrile,  simian-like  restless- 
ness of  the  music.  It  was  written  for  people 
of  little  musical  intelligence,  people  who  must 
hum  a  tune  or  ever  after  view  it  with  contempt. 
Verdi  could  furnish  tunes  by  the  hundred  — 
real,  vital,  dramatic  ones.  Think  of  the  waste, 
the  saddening  waste,  of  material  made  by  the 
young  maestro  in  Oberto,  Nabucco,  I  Lom- 
bardi,  Ernani,  I  Due  Foscari,  Attila,  Macbeth, 
Luisa  Miller,  and  I  Masnadieri !  If  he  could 
have  but  saved  them  for  his  latter  days  —  for 
his  so-called  third  period !  I  know  that  your 
early  Verdian  refuses  to  consider  the  later 
music.  He  even  listens  to  Alda  under  protest. 
In  it  lurks  the  Wagnerian  Warm  that  in  Otello 
and  Falstaff  stings  to  death  the  melodic  genius 
of  the  venerable  master.  Now,  I  quarrel  with 
no  man's  artistic  tastes.  It  were  a  futile  pro- 
ceeding. If  you  love  Rigoletto  better  than 
Otello,  I  have  no  objection  to  make.  I  cannot 
bring  any  argument  to  bear  upon  you,  for  I  am 
not  a  special  pleader  in  matters  musical.  As 
263 


OVERTONES 

well  try  to  convince  a  man  who  asserts  that 
Dumas  pere  is  a  greater  novelist  than  Flaubert. 
Yet  I  enjoy  certain  moments  in  Rigoletto,  just 
as  I  think  The  Three  Guardsmen  rattling  good 
reading.  But  to  call  either  the  opera  or  the  ro- 
mance great  art  is  to  mix  your  critical  values. 

Verdi  was  not  by  nature  a  reformer.  A  man 
of  sensual  gifts  in  the  way  of  music-making,  a 
born  dramatizer  of  anything  from  an  antique  ruin 
to  a  murder,  he  took  up  the  operatic  form  as 
he  found  it  and  did  not  seek  to  develop  it.  But 
he  poured  into  its  ancient,  honorable,  and  some- 
what shaky  mould  stuff  of  a  stirring  nature  — ■ 
and  also  an  amazing  amount  of  it.  Think  of 
the  twenty-five  and  more  operas  he  made  before 
he  reached  Ai'da  !  To  be  sure,  there  is  a  sus- 
picious resemblance  between  his  melodies,  his 
characters,  his  situations ;  there  is  always  the 
blood-curdling  story  of  intrigue, — political,  pas- 
sionate, —  with  its  elopements,  loves,  cutthroat 
conspirators,  booted  chorus,  and  its  orchestral 
tremolo.  We  get  the  dime  novel  set  to  music, 
the  inartistic  glorification  of  the  melodrama. 
Verdi  needed  money,  love,  fame,  easily  gained, 
and  being  a  much  more  industrious  man  than 
Rossini  he  contrived  to  turn  out  in  forty  years 
twice  as  many  musical  pot-boilers.  I  have  al- 
ways admired  Rossini's  musical  laziness.  Once 
rich,  he  refused  to  compose  any  more.  As  his 
facility  was  on  a  par  with  his  lack  of  artistic 
conscience,  the  thought  of  the  amount  he  might 
264 


VERDI   AND    BOITO 

have  left  makes  one  shudder.  But  luckily  he 
was  content  to  give  us  —  not  to  mention  any  of 
the  others  —  The  Barber  of  Seville,  a  masterpiece 
pure  and  undefiled. 

Verdi,  also  lacking  an  artistic  conscience,  and 
without  high  artistic  ideals,  produced  operas  as 
indefatigably  as  incubators  chickens.  Naturally 
such  music  perished  early,  and  his  failures  more 
than  balance  his  successes.  He  made  money, 
an  enormous  amount ;  he  was  probably  the  rich- 
est composer  that  ever  drove  a  pen.  The  usual 
fate  has  overtaken  the  early  music,  while  even 
Rigoletto,  II  Trovatore,  and  La  Traviata  no 
longer  draw  unless  sung  by  an  "all  star"  cast. 
I  pass  over  the  Manzoni  Requiem  of  1874.  It 
was  too  near  the  Ai'da  epoch  to  make  a  great 
forward  step.  Otello,  in  1887,  set  the  musical 
world  mad  with  surprise,  curiosity,  delight.  It 
reveals  little  or  none  of  the  narrow,  noisy,  vul- 
gar, and  violent  Verdi  of  1850.  The  character- 
drawing  is  done  by  a  man  who  is  master  of  his 
material.  The  plot  moves  in  majestical  splen- 
dor, and  the  musical  psychology  is  often  subtle. 
At  last  Verdi  has  flowered.  His  other  music, 
smelling  ranker  of  the  soil,  showing  more  the- 
matic invention,  was  but  the  effort  of  a  hot-headed 
man  of  the  footlights,  a  seeker  after  applause 
and  money.  In  Otello  all  musical  provincial- 
isms have  vanished ;  the  writing  is  clear,  the 
passion  more  controlled,  the  effects  aimed  at 
easily  compassed.  The  master  craft  of  Iago 
265 


OVERTONES 

is  set  over  against  the  fiery,  nerve-shaking  pas- 
sion of  Otello,  and  Shakespeare  is  suggested, 
withal  a  very  Italian  one. 

Falstaff  was  a  second  surprise.  How  an  old 
graybeard  of  eighty  could  have  conceived  such 
music  is  only  to  be  explained  by  the  young  heart 
of  the  man,  by  his  sweetly  healthy  nature,  his 
Latin  frugality  in  living.  He  was  ever  a  taci- 
turn man,  a  stoic,  not  an  epicurean.  As  an  index 
to  his  character  his  music  is  often  misleading. 
Add  to  these  qualities  the  beautiful  friendship  of 
Arrigo  Boi'to,  from  which  came  a  libretto,  and  the 
sum  total  is  a  setting  of  Shakespeare's  comedy 
such  as  the  world  has  never  seen.  Here  again 
Wagner  had  less  to  do  with  the  matter  than  is 
supposed.  In  the  musical  dialogue  Verdi  pat- 
terned after  Die  Meistersinger,  for  the  emotion 
ever  follows  the  text.  From  Mozart's  Marriage 
of  Figaro  and  Rossini's  Barber  of  Seville  he  ab- 
sorbed no  little  of  gay  sunshine  and  effervescence. 
But  his  form  is  his  own  ;  it  grew  out  of  the  sit- 
uations of  the  play,  and  was  not  a  procrustean 
bed  of  theory  upon  which  the  composer  stretched 
his  characters.  It  is  laughing  and  joyous,  this 
comedy  of  an  octogenarian.  It  fairly  ripples 
with  the  humor  of  the  Fat  Knight.  There  are  no 
leading  motives  in  the  Wagnerian  sense,  though 
every  character  is  outlined  with  precision. 

Now,  I   assert  that  Arrigo  Boi'to   helped  all 
this,   stimulated  a   young-old    man    to    conquer 
new  and  more  fruitful  provinces.     And  Bo'fto, 
266 


VERDI    AND    BOITO 

who  built  two  of  the  best  librettos  we  know, 
certainly  influenced  Verdi  in  his  study  of  in- 
strumentation. Compare  Rigoletto  and  Otello 
orchestrally !  The  advance  is  remarkable,  all 
things  being  considered.  And  at  Verdi's  years  ! 
I  suspect  that  Verdi  made  the  sketches,  which 
Boi'to  transformed  into  painted  pictures ;  just 
as  I  discern,  as  can  any  one  with  ears,  the  in- 
tellectual characteristics  in  common  between 
Mefistofele  and  Iago's  monologues.  Yet  Verdi 
is  true  Verdi  to  the  last. 

Rigoletto,  II  Trovatore,  and  La  Traviata  have 
one  cardinal  merit,  in  addition  to  their  mira- 
cles of  mellifluousness  —  they  prefigure  the  later 
Verdi,  the  thinking  Verdi,  the  truer  musical 
dramatist.  In  regarding  these  we  again  en- 
counter critical  superciliousness  of  the  most 
pronounced  type.  The  neo-Verdians  will  have 
none  of  the  middle-century  Verdi  —  forgetting 
that  no  man  may  lift  himself  to  the  stars  by  his 
own  bootstraps.  Verdi  offers  a  fine  picture  of 
crawling,  creeping  evolution.  I  confess  that  I 
believe  the  man  would  have  stuck  at  Don  Carlos, 
Sicilian  Vespers,  Araldo,  Un  Ballo  in  Maschera, 
La  Forza  del  Destino,  Simon  Boccanegra,  and 
the  rest  of  the  reactionary  stuff,  had  it  not  been 
for  the  masterful  influence  of  Boi'to,  himself  a 
composer.  Boi'to  helped  Verdi  to  scramble  upon 
the  shoulders  of  Verdi,  compelled  the  Verdi  of 
1887  to  forget  the  Verdi  of  1871. 

Aida  is  pointed  out  as  the  great  turn  in  the 
267 


OVERTONES 

style  of  the  composer.  It  is  fuller  of  Meyer- 
beerisms  than  any  opera  composed  since  L'Afri- 
caine,  as  full  as  is  Rienzi.  Indeed,  I  doubt 
if  Ai'da  would  have  been  born  had  not  L'Afri- 
caine  preceded  it.  The  resemblance  to  Meyer- 
beer does  not  stop  at  the  libretto ;  there  is  the 
same  flamboyancy  in  color,  the  same  barbaric 
taste  for  full-blown  harmony  and  exotic  tunes 
—  not  to  mention  the  similarities  in  the  stories. 
Wagner  had  far  less  to  do  with  Ai'da  than  Meyer- 
beer, though  many  believe  the  contrary.  To 
Rigoletto,  in  185 1,  must  we  go  in  the  search  for 
the  roots  of  the  mature  Verdi.  In  the  declama- 
tory monologues  of  the  hunchback  jester  are  the 
germs  of  the  more  intellectual  and  subtle  mono- 
logues of  Iago  and  of  Falstaff.  II  Trovatore 
contains  strong  dramatic  situations,  and  if  the 
tower  scene  is  become  hackneyed,  yet  how  well 
devised !  In  this  much-admired,  much-sung 
composition  are  to  be  found  harmonic  straws 
which  indicate  to  the  keen  observer  the  way 
the  musical  wind  was  bound  to  blow  nearly  a 
half-century  later.  With  Traviata  Verdi  made 
his  first  attempt  at  musical  psychologizing.  Ba- 
nal as  is  the  book,  there  is  no  denying  the 
power  of  some  of  its  situations.  No,  decidedly 
it  will  not  do  to  overlook  the  Verdi  of  1850. 
It  would  be  building  musical  history  without 
straw. 

As  among  modern  German  music-dramas  Tris- 
tan and  Isolde  is  the  greatest,  so  is  Otello  among 
26S 


VERDI    AND    BOITO 

the  lyric  dramas  of  Italy  —  one  might  as  well  in- 
clude France.  Falstaff  is  their  comic  pendant  as 
Die  Meistersinger  is  to  Tristan.  Verdi  composed 
Otello  when  he  was  past  threescore  and  ten. 
The  fact  seems  incredible ;  in  its  score  seethes 
the  passion  of  middle  manhood,  the  fervors  of  a 
flowering  maturity.  No  one  ever  dreamed  of 
setting  Shakespeare  in  this  royally  tragic  fashion. 
Rossini  fluted  with  the  theme  ;  in  Verdi  jealousy, 
love,  envy,  hatred,  are  handled  by  a  master.  It 
is  a  wonderful  opera,  and  a  Shakespearean  Verdi 
began  at  a  time  when  most  men  are  preparing 
for  death.  Reversing  natural  processes,  this 
phenomenal  being  wrote  younger  music  the 
older  he  grew.  After  Ai'da  —  Otello!  After 
grim  tragedy,  joyous  comedy  —  Falstaff  !  If 
he  had  survived  ninety  years,  he  might  have 
written  a  comic  opera  that  would  have  outpointed 
in  wit  and  humor  Johann  Strauss  ! 

Otello  is  a  true  music-drama ;  its  composer 
seldom  halts  to  symphonize  his  events  as  does 
Wagner.  Bo'i'to,  the  greatest  of  librettists,  has 
skeletonized  the  story ;  Verdi's  music  gives  it 
vitality,  grace,  contour,  brilliancy.  And  yet  the 
Italian  poet  has  not  gravely  disturbed  the  old 
original.  It  is  but  a  compliment  to  his  gift  of 
absorbing  the  Shakespearean  spirit  to  say  that 
Iago's  Credo,  that  terrific  explosion  of  nihilism 
and  hatred,  does  not  seem  out  of  perspective  in 
the  picture.  It  is  Boi'to's  intercalation,  as  are 
the  Cypriote  choruses  in  Act  II.  All  the  rest 
269 


OVERTONES 

is  pure  Shakespeare,  barring  a  few  happy  trans- 
positions from  the  Senate  speech  to  the  duo  at 
the  close  of  Act  I. 

Verdi's  character-drawing  is  masterly.  Do 
not  let  us  balk  at  comparisons,  or  for  that  mat- 
ter at  superlatives.  No  composer  ever  lived  — 
Mozart  and  Wagner  are  alone  excepted — who 
could  have  so  drawn  the  hot-blooded  Moor  and 
the  cynical  cannikin  clinker,  set  them  facing  each 
other  in  the  score,  and  allowed  them  to  work  out 
their  own  musical  fates,  as  has  Verdi.  The  key 
to  Otello  is  its  characterization  —  in  a  musical 
sense,  of  course.  But  the  medium  in  which 
Verdi  bids  them  move,  their  fluidity,  their  hu- 
manity—  these  are  the  things  that  almost  defy 
critical  analysis.  Whether  he  is  listening  to  his 
crafty  Ancient,  or  caressing  Desdemona,  or  rag- 
ing like  the  hardy  Numean  lion,  it  is  always 
Otello,  the  Moor  of  Venice,  a  living,  suffering, 
loving  man  —  Shakespeare's  Otello. 

The  character  does  not  suggest  the  flashy 
operatic,  the  ranter  of  the  footlights.  Nor  does 
Iago,  whether  as  the  bluff  hero  of  battles  and 
battles,  or  the  loathsome  serpent  stinging  the 
other's  soul,  ever  lag  dramatically,  ever  sink  into 
the  conventional  attitudes  of  a  transpontine  melo- 
drama. It  is  Iago,  "the  spirit  that  denies,"  un- 
derlined perhaps,  as  music  must  emphasize  ever 
the  current  emotions  of  a  character.  Desdemona 
is  drawn  in  relief  to  her  furious  lover  and  war- 
rior, and  in  relief  to  her  cold-blooded  maligner. 
270 


VERDI    AND    BOITO 

Verdi  has  assigned  her  gentle  music,  the  Ave 
Maria,  the  Willow  Song.  She  is  a  pure  white 
cloud  against  which  as  a  background  are  etched 
the  powerful  masculine  motives  of  the  play. 
Delicacy  and  vivacity  reveal,  bit  by  bit,  the 
interior  of  a  sweet,  troubled  soul.  The  other 
figures,  Cassio,  Emilia,  are  sketches  that  add  to 
the  density  of  the  background  without  detract- 
ing from  the  chief  motives.  It  is  a  remarkable 
libretto. 

From  the  opening  storm  to  the  strangling 
scene  the  music  flows  swiftly,  as  swiftly  as  the 
drama.  Rich,  varied,  and  eloquent,  the  orchestra 
seldom  tarries  in  its  vivid  and  acute  commentary. 
There  is  scant  employment  of  typical  motives  — 
the  "  kiss "  theme  in  Act  I  is  sounded  with 
psychologic  fidelity  when  Otello  dies.  In  the 
Handkerchief  Trio  is  there  pause  for  instru- 
mental elaboration ;  but,  in  the  main,  old  set 
forms  are  avoided,  and  while  there  is  melodic 
flow,  it  does  not  often  crystallize.  The  duo  at 
the  end  of  Act  I,  the  Credo  of  unfaith,  and 
Otello's  exhortation  to  the  high  heavens  in  Act 
II ;  the  tremendous  outburst  in  the  next  act  with 
Iago's  sardonically  triumphant  exclamation,  "  Be- 
hold the  lion  !  "  as  he  plants  his  scornful  heel  on 
the  recumbent  man  —  then  the  final  catastrophe  ! 
Throughout  there  are  picturesque  strokes,  effects 
of  massed  splendor ;  and  about  the  tempest-stirred 
souls  is  an  atmosphere  of  gloom,  of  doom,  of 
guilt  and  melancholy  foreboding. 
271 


OVERTONES 

Verdi  has  felt  the  moods  of  his  poet  and  made 
them  his  own.  The  moods,  the  character-paint- 
ing, are  progressive ;  Otello,  Iago,  grow  from  act 
to  act.  The  simple-hearted,  trusting  general  with 
his  agonized  cry,  "  Miseria  mia,"  develops  into  a 
savage  thirsting  for  blood  ;  "  Sangue,  sangue  1 " 
he  howls ;  he  sees  blood ;  the  multitudinous 
music  is  incarnadine  with  it.  And  it  is  all  vocal, 
it  is  written  for  the  human  voice ;  the  voice,  not 
the  orchestra,  is  the  centre  of  gravity  in  this 
astounding  drama.  Another  such  Iago,  subtle, 
sinister,  evil  incarnate,  withal  a  dangerously  grace- 
ful fellow,  —  such  an  impersonation  as  Maurel's 
may  never  be  duplicated.  And  this  singing 
actor  had  the  advantage  of  Verdi  and  Boi'to's 
"  coaching "  in  1887,  when  the  music-drama 
was  produced  at  Milan.  This  to  show  that  the 
music  play  demands  as  excellent  an  Iago  as  an 
Otello  —  indeed,  Verdi's  first  idea  of  a  title  was 
the  former  —  and  while  there  have  been  several 
Otellos,  only  one  great  Iago  has  appeared  thus 
far  on  the  contemporary  operatic  stage. 

BOITO'S  MEFISTOFELE 

Mefistofele  by  Arrigo  Bo'ito  was  revived  at 
the  Metropolitan  Opera  House,  January  14, 
1 90 1,  where  it  was  originally  heard  in  Decem- 
ber, 1883,  and  later,  January  15,  1896.  There  is 
a  record  that  Marie  Roze  was  the  first  Mar- 
guerite of  Boi'to  at  the  Academy  of  Music.    This 


VERDI    AND    BOITO 

was  as  early  as  November  24,  1880.  Mefistofele 
was  first  heard  in  Milan,  Italy,  in  1868  :  its  pre- 
miere was  a  scene  of  rioting,  and  a  duel  in  which 
Boito  participated  occurred  later.  Public  feeling 
ran  very  high,  for  they  take  their  art  seriously  in 
Italy.  The  performance  lasted  six  hours,  and 
was  a  hopeless  failure.  Not  until  the  work, 
pruned,  revised,  and  greatly  curtailed,  was  re- 
peated in  Bologna,  did  Boi'to  receive  a  fair  hear- 
ing. He  had  composed  little  previous  to  this 
music-drama,  preferring  journalism  and  literary 
work.  But  Mefistofele  was  such  a  challenge  to 
older  operatic  forms  that  the  work  was  soon 
sung  in  London  and  elsewhere.  Boi'to,  who  is 
chiefly  known  as  the  librettist  of  the  later  Verdi, 
is  a  man  of  the  highest  artistic  ideals.  His 
mother  was  Polish,  which  may  account  for  his 
versatility,  his  poetic  gifts.  He  worked  over, 
re-orchestrated,  and  polished  Mefistofele,  and 
changed  Faust  from  a  tenor  to  a  barytone  part. 
And  it  all  smells  of  the  lamp,  despite  some  beau- 
tiful pages. 

Mefistofele  was  once  music  of  the  future ; 
now  it  reminds  one  of  some  strange,  amorphous 
survival  from  a  remote  period.  It  is  such  a  tre- 
mendous attempt  to  embrace  all  of  Goethe's 
profound  world  philosophy,  poetry,  dramatic 
symbolism,  that  it  is  a  failure  —  a  remarkable 
failure.  There  is  little  melodic  invention,  the 
prison  scene  being  the  top  notch  of  its  dramatic 
passion;  while  the  tenor  solo,  From  the  Meadows, 
t  273 


OVERTONES 

From  the  Valleys,  is  strangely  reminiscent  of  the 
theme  from  the  slow  movement  of  Beethoven's 
Kreutzer  sonata.  It  is  mostly  music  of  the 
head,  not  of  the  heart.  Boi'to  has  admirably 
characterized  Mefistofele.  His  sinister  solo,  I 
am  the  Spirit  that  Denies,  is  very  striking;  the 
orchestra  with  its  shrill,  diabolical  whistling  sug- 
gests Berlioz.  And  it  also  suggests  in  feeling  the 
Honor  solo  in  Verdi's  Falstaff  and  Iago's  Credo 
in  Otello.  Bo'fto  and  Verdi  have  collaborated 
so  much  that  they  must  have  absorbed  each 
other's  ideas.  In  the  garden  scene — a  quartet 
and  nothing  more  —  Rigoletto  is  recalled  in  the 
echoing  laughter.  It  seems  trifling  though 
trickily  difficult.  Goethe's  Marguerite  is  not 
realized.  She  is  hardly  ingenue,  this  flirting 
girl  who  so  calmly  gives  a  sleeping  potion  to 
her  mother.  And  the  loving  side  of  her  nature 
is  barely  outlined. 

The  Prologue  in  Heaven  reveals  Boi'to's  fine 
skill  in  choral  writing.  Mascagni  did  not  fail  to 
note  this  when  writing  the  prayer  in  Cavalleria 
Rusticana.  The  scene  on  the  Brocken,  the 
Witches'  Sabbath,  is  very  difficult  to  realize 
scenically.  It  contains  a  big  fugue.  The  dying 
scene  is  very  strong,  dramatically  stronger  than 
Gounod's.  Gounod  set  out  to  write  a  very 
effective  operatic  scena.  His  trio  has  in  it  the 
fire  of  the  footlights.  BoTto  is  possessed  with 
the  tragic  beauty  of  the  situation,  and  so  presents 
a  more  affecting  and  dramatically  truthful  pic- 
274 


VERDI    AND    BOITO 

ture.  Calve  has  made  this  scene  familiar  to 
New  York. 

Boi'to  attempts  Part  II  of  Faust.  The  classi- 
cal Sabbath  leaves  us  dull,  although  the  com- 
poser with  his  unrhymed  dactylic  and  choriambic 
verse,  and  the  accompanying  music,  with  its 
old-fashioned  harmonic  flavor,  endeavors  to 
symbolize  the  embrace  of  German  and  Greek 
ideals. 

The  public  sees  only  Faust  consoling  himself 
with  the  dark-haired  Elena,  and  the  symbolism 
falls  flat.  There  is  some  effort  at  unity  in  the 
welding  of  the  prologue  and  epilogue  by  using 
the  opening  theme  as  a  chorale  finale.  The  one 
well-known  duo  of  this  second  part  is  La  Luna 
Immobile  for  soprano  and  alto.  But  it  is  all  too 
episodic  to  rivet  the  attention ;  indeed,  Mefis- 
tofele  is  a  series  of  loosely  connected  episodes. 
One  is  constantly  reminded  of  Mascagni's  obli- 
gations to  Boi'to.  The  spoor  of  Verdi's  later 
style  is  also  here.  Boi'to  seems  to  have  been 
the  pivotal  point  of  the  neo-Italian  school  — 
himself  remaining  in  the  background  —  while 
the  youngsters  profited  by  his  many  experiment- 
ings.  Mefistofele  strikes  one  as  an  experiment, 
with  Wagner  as  a  model.  The  most  admirable 
thing  in  the  work  is  the  free  treatment  of  the 
declamatory  passages.  In  this  Boi'to  set  the 
pace  for  Verdi. 

Boito's  devil  is  greater  than  Gounod's.  The 
French  devil  is  not  a  terrible  fellow ;  he  is  too 
275 


OVERTONES 

fond  of  high  living,  and  has  a  pretty  taste  in 
wine.  The  sardonic,  mocking  arch  fiend  of  Boi'to 
is  more  like  the  popular  notion  of  mankind's 
enemy.  He  is  familiar  with  the  Powers,  and  is 
contemptuous  of  earthworms.  His  defiant  and 
evil  song  of  Triumph  is  the  best  thing  in  the 
work.  The  solo  in  the  Brocken  scene,  Here  is 
the  World  Empty  and  Round,  does  not  make  the 
same  impression  as  the  Denial  song.  Faust  in 
this  version  is  rather  colorless,  and  more  philoso- 
pher than  lover.  Marguerite's  most  musical 
episode  is  when  she  recalls  her  lost  happiness 
in  the  mad  scene.  And  there  is  much  music 
that  is  ugly  and  dreary,  for  Boi'to,  no  matter 
what  he  has  accomplished  in  his  unpublished 
music-drama,  is  in  Mefistofele  rather  the  poet 
than  the  composer.  Of  rich,  red,  musical  blood, 
of  vital  figures,  we  are  offered  but  little.  This 
composition  is  a  product  for  the  closet.  It  lacks 
that  quality  possessed  by  musicians  of  meaner 
attainments  than  Boi'to  —  the  quality  of  human- 
ity. There  are  dramatic  moments,  but  the  story 
halts,  the  symbolism  is  not  appreciable,  and  the 
mystic  element  not  quite  realized.  To  give  the 
world  a  Faust  in  tone  one  must  be  a  musical 
Goethe.  Neither  Gounod  nor  Boi'to  was  strong 
enough  to  cope  with  the  grandeur  and  beauty 
of  Goethe's  masterpiece  among  masterpieces. 
Gounod  was  a  musical  sensualist,  lacking  lofty 
imagination ;  Boi'to  fails  in  the  sensuous  tem- 
perament and  is  ever  cerebral. 
276 


VIII 

THE    ETERNAL    FEMININE 

i 

A  Grand  Piano  underneath  the  Bough, 
A  Gramophone,  a  Chinese  Gong,  and  Thou 
Trying  to  sing  an  Anthem  off  the  Key  — 
Oh,  Paradise  were  Wilderness  enow  ! 

—  Wallace  Irwin. 

To  the  girl  who  plays  Chopin  !  This  sounds 
like  a  toast,  and  a  cynic  would  certainly  add : 
"  May  her  pretty  fingers  ne'er  touch  ivory 
again  !  "  But  it  is  not  a  health  that  I  wish  to 
propose,  nor  yet  an  exhortation.  My  notion  is 
to  put  the  question  boldly  :  Can  women  play 
Chopin  ?  Before  the  rigor  of  such  a  query  the 
hardiest-souled  male  must  retire  abashed,  or 
write  with  the  usual  masculine  brutality  and 
lack  of  finesse.  Chopin  is  the  favorite  composer 
of  women ;  Chopin  rules  the  soul  of  the  girl, 
and  to  Chopin  is  addressed  a  particular  form  of 
worship.  This  consists  of  inarticulate  gasps, 
irregular  sighs,  and  the  glance  which  is  called 
psychic.  To  girls  of  eighteen  or  thereabouts 
Chopin  is  a  religion  —  a  sentimental  one. 
Sympathetic  medical  men  diagnose  the  symp- 
277 


OVERTONES 

toms  and  declare  them  Chopinitis.  We  have, 
many  of  us,  suffered  severely  from  it ;  most 
musical  and  unmusical  people  do.  Chopin  is  in 
the  emotional  curriculum  of  every  woman  who 
plays  the  piano ;  therefore  it  shocks  one  if  this 
question  be  posed :  Can  women  play  Chopin  ? 

Let  us  be  scientific,  let  us  be  profound,  and 
let  us  quote  rows  of  horrid,  forbidding  figures. 
I  am  now  proposing  a  little  journey  into  the 
misty  mid-region  of  Womanology,  for  the  need 
of  proving  my  somewhat  oblique  case.  It  is 
crab-wise,  this  progression,  but  it  may  serve. 
The  Nineteenth  Century  some  years  ago  con- 
tained an  article  on  woman's  brain  by  Alexander 
Sutherland.  Written  in  fullest  accord  with  the 
aims  and  ideals  of  the  new  woman,  the  author  is 
yet  forced  to  confess  that "  the  male  brain  has  an 
advantage  of  about  10  per  cent  in  weight,"  and 
adds  that  "it  is  a  difference  which  certainly 
affords  some  little  foundation  for  a  very  ancient 
belief,"  said  belief  being  the  inferiority  of  the 
female  intellect  to  the  male  intellect.  But  he 
proves  that  90  per  cent  of  women  are  the  equals 
of  90  per  cent  of  men.  And  in  the  very  be- 
ginning of  his  short  study  he  demonstrates  that 
the  neurons  on  the  cortex  of  the  brain  are  quite 
as  numerous  in  women  as  in  men,  and  that  these 
neurons  "  are  the  instruments  of  mental  energy." 

Mere  brain  weight,  then,  seems  to  prove  noth- 
ing. It  is  the  activity  of  the  neurons  which 
determines  the  quality  of  brain  power.  Music  is 
278 


THE    ETERNAL   FEMININE 

denied  a  place  among  the  more  intellectual  arts 
by  many  great  thinkers.  Whether  this  is  just 
or  not,  considering  the  vast  claims  of  Bach  and 
Beethoven,  I  will  not  say,  but  one  thing  is  cer- 
tain :  in  Chopin  emotional  sensibility  predomi- 
nates, and  as  women  are  supposed  to  be  more 
emotional  than  their  mates,  ergo  they  should 
play  Chopin  better.  But  are  they  more  emo- 
tional ?  Lombroso,  who  has  measured  the  sighs 
of  sentimental  girls,  and  weighed  her  tears,  says 
no.  In  an  extraordinary  series  of  public  experi- 
ments, conducted  at  Turin,  the  learned  Italian 
found  that  woman  as  compared  with  man  was 
deficient  in  tactile  sensibility  ;  that  she  did  not 
record  impressions,  whether  optical,  aural,  or 
sensory,  as  rapidly  or  with  such  clear  definition 
as  did  man.  I  admit  this  sounds  discouraging, 
and  is  enough  to  give  pause  to  the  upward  flight 
of  the  sex,  if  that  flight  is  to  be  tested  by 
scientific  analysis.  But  what  is  all  this  testing, 
weighing,  and  measuring  when  faced  by  the 
spectacle  of  a  glorious  winged  creature  which 
sails  away  on  victorious  pinions  with  plumage 
unruffled  by  Lombroso  and  his  laboratory  logic  ? 
A  genuine  fiministe,  one  who  gently  felt  the 
female  pulse  of  his  century  and  suavely  waved 
the  patient  aside,  was  the  late  Ernest  Renan. 
If  ever  a  man  should  have  had  exalted  ideals  of 
womanhood,  he  was  that  man.  His  sister 
Henriette  was  his  life  companion,  a  veritable 
staff  to  him  in  his  erudite  studies,  and  when  she 
279 


OVERTONES 

died,  he  withered,  or,  rather,  grew  fat  and 
spiritually  flabby.  Yet  this  most  subtly  feminine 
of  men  had  the  ingratitude  to  write  :  "  There  is 
no  doubt  whatever  that  at  the  present  time 
feminine  instincts  occupy  more  space  in  the 
general  physiognomy  of  the  world  than  they  did 
formerly.  The  world  is  more  exclusively  pre- 
occupied just  now  with  frivolities  that  formerly 
were  looked  upon  as  the  exclusive  property  of 
women.  Instead  of  asking  men  for  great  achieve- 
ments, bold  enterprises,  and  heroic  labors,  the 
women  ask  them  for  riches  only,  to  satisfy  a 
vulgar  taste.  The  general  movement  of  the 
world  has  put  itself  at  the  service  of  the  instincts 
of  woman,  not  those  splendid  instincts  through 
which  they  display  more  clearly  than  men  can, 
perhaps,  the  divine  ideal  of  our  nature,  but  the 
lower  instincts  which  form  the  least  noble  por- 
tion of  her  vocation."  This  was  written  in 
1855.  What  would  Renan  have  written  in  the 
twentieth  century  ? 

We  have  now  laboriously  collated  the  opinions 
of  three  men  —  Sutherland  on  the  brain,  Lom- 
broso  on  the  sensibility,  and  Renan  on  the 
moral  nature  of  woman.  The  general  tenor  of 
these  three  messages  is  hardly  as  hopeful  as  the 
new  woman  could  desire.  Let  us  leave  the 
chill  topic  in  all  its  frozen  splendor  and  turn  to 
the  latter  part  of  my  question  —  Chopin. 
What  is  Chopin  playing  ? 

That  Chopin  was  a  Pole  who  went  from  War- 
280 


THE    ETERNAL    FEMININE 

saw  to  Paris,  there  won  fame,  the  love  of  George 
Sand,  misery,  and  a  sad  death  are  facts  that 
even  schoolgirls  lisp.  The  pianist-composer 
belongs  to  the  stock  figures  of  musical  fiction. 
He  was  slender,  had  consumption,  slim,  long 
fingers,  played  vaporous  moon-haunted  music, 
and  after  his  desertion  by  Sand  coughed  him- 
self off  the  contemporary  canvas  in  the  most 
genteel  and  romantic  manner.  I  like  to  recall 
George  Moore's  description  of  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson :  "  I  think  of  Mr.  Stevenson,"  he 
wrote  in  his  Confessions,  "  as  a  consumptive 
youth  weaving  garlands  of  sad  flowers  with  pale 
weak  hands,  or  leaning  to  a  large  plate-glass 
window  and  scratching  thereon  certain  exquisite 
profiles  with  a  diamond  pencil."  The  piano 
was  Chopin's  window,  and  upon  it  he  traced 
arabesques,  tender  and  heroic,  sorrowful  and 
capricious.  All  this  is  Chopin  romantically 
conventionalized  by  artist-biographers  and  asso- 
ciates. The  real  man,  as  nearly  as  we  dare  de- 
scribe a  real  man  —  was  of  a  gentle,  slightly 
acid  temper,  and  of  a  refined  nature,  who  had  a 
talent  for  playing  the  piano  that  was  without 
parallel,  and  a  positive  genius  in  composition. 
His  life  was  stupid,  if  compared  with  an  actor's 
or  a  sailor's,  and  was  devoid  of  public  incident. 
We  can  see  him  giving  a  few  piano  lessons  to 
prim,  chaperoned  misses  of  the  Boulevard  Saint- 
Germain  before  each  noon ;  in  the  afternoons 
making  calls  or  studying  ;  in  the  evening  at  the 
J  281 


OVERTONES 

opera  for  an  hour,  later  in  the  enchanted  circle 
of  countesses  who  listened  to  his  weaving  music, 
and  afterward  a  space  for  breathing  at  a  fash- 
ionable cafe  before  retiring.  Public  appear- 
ances were  rare ;  this  aristocrat  loved  not  the 
larger  world  and  its  democratic  criticisms.  His 
was  a  temperament  prone  to  self-coddling. 
Only  to  the  favored  few  did  he  reveal  the  rich- 
ness of  his  inner  life.  That  he  suffered  intensely 
from  petty  annoyances  before  which  the  ordi- 
nary man  would  hunch  his  shoulders  was  but 
the  result  of  a  hyperaesthetic  delicacy.  An 
aeolian  harp  !  you  cry,  and  the  simile  is  a  happy 
one.  But  no  wind  harp  has  ever  discoursed 
such  music  as  Chopin's  piano. 

And  then  there  is  the  national  element,  per- 
haps the  most  fascinating  of  all  the  fibres  of  his 
many-colored  soul.  Chopin  was  Polish,  he  loved 
Poland  madly,  yet  Chopin  never  laid  down  his 
music  to  take  up  arms  for  his  native  land,  fight 
or  die  for,  as  did  his  countrywoman  Emilia  Plater. 
Being  infinitely  more  feminine  than  any  woman, 
Chopin  sang  his  dreams,  his  disillusions,  into 
his  music,  and  put  his  fiery  patriotism  into  his 
polonaises.  His  range  is  not  so  wide  as  Bee- 
thoven's; but  it  is  quite  as  intense.  His  ma- 
zurkas, valses,  nocturnes,  studies,  preludes, 
impromptus,  scherzos,  ballades,  polonaises,  fan- 
taisies,  variations,  concertos,  cradle-song,  barca- 
rolle, sonatas,  and  various  dances  are  the  most 
intimate  music  written  for  any  instrument.  A 
282 


THE    ETERNAL   FEMININE 

lyric  poet,  he  touched  us  to  the  core,  and  with 
exquisite  tentacles  drew  our  soul  to  his.  He  is 
dead,  yet  a  vital  musical  force  to-day.  To  play 
Chopin  one  must  have  acute  sensibilities,  a  ver- 
satility of  mood,  a  perfect  mechanism,  the  heart 
of  a  woman  and  the  brain  of  a  man.  He  is  not 
all  elegant  languors  and  melancholy  simperings. 
A  capricious,  even  morbid,  temperament  is  de- 
manded, and  there  must  be  the  fire  that  kindles 
and  the  power  that  menaces  ;  a  fluctuating, 
wavering  rhythm  yet  a  rhythmic  sense  of  exces- 
sive rectitude ;  a  sensuous  touch,  yet  a  touch 
that  contains  an  infinity  of  colorings ;  supreme 
musicianship  —  Chopin  was  a  musician  first,  poet 
afterwards ;  a  big  nature  overflowing  with  milk 
and  honey ;  and,  last  of  all,  you  must  have  suf- 
fered the  tribulations  of  life  and  love,  until  the 
nerves  are  whittled  away  to  a  thin,  sensitive 
edge  and  the  soul  is  aflame  with  the  joy  of 
death.  Does  this  sound  like  mocking  at  the 
impossible?  All  this  and  much  more  that  is 
subtle  and  indescribable  are  needed  to  interpret 
Chopin.  And  now  do  you  see  that  I  am  right 
when  I  declare  that  most  women  play  his  music 
mechanically  ? 

Who  has  played  Chopin  in  a  remarkable  man- 
ner? The  list  is  not  large.  Chopin  himself 
must  have  been  the  greatest  of  all,  though  Liszt 
declared  that  his  physical  strength  was  not  able 
to  cope  with  the  more  heroic  of  his  works. 
Liszt,  Tausig,  Rubinstein,  Essipoff,  Joseffy, 
283 


OVERTONES 

Karl  Heymann,  Pachmann,  and  Paderewski  — 
a  somewhat  attenuated  number  of  names.  Of 
course  there  were  many  others ;  but  these  rep- 
resent supreme  mastery  in  various  phases  of  the 
master's  music.  The  real  pupils  all  claimed  to 
have  inherited  the  magic  formula,  the  tradi- 
tion. To-day  the  best-known  Chopin  players  are 
Joseffy,  Rosenthal,  Pachmann,  Paderewski,  and 
others.  Each  has  his  virtues,  and  to  define  their 
limitations,  enunciate  their  excellences,  would  be 
critical  hair-splitting.  Nearly  all  the  younger 
professional  men  and  women  play  Chopin  after 
approved  academic  models.  He  is  expounded 
by  aestheticians  and  taught  throughout  the  land. 
He  is  mauled,  maimed,  thumped,  and  otherwise 
maltreated  at  conservatories,  and  the  soul  of 
him  is  seldom  invoked,  but  floats,  a  wraith  with 
melancholy  eyes,  over  nearly  every  piano  in 
Christendom.  There  have  been  and  are  charm- 
ing interpreters  of  his  music  among  women 
pianists.  Paderewski  told  me  that  he  never 
heard  the  mazurkas  better  played  than  by  Mar- 
celline,  Princess  Czartoryska,  a  beloved  pupil 
of  Chopin's.  We  have  never  had  the  mazurkas 
so  charmingly  played  here  as  by  the  wilful 
Vladimir  de  Pachmann ;  yet  not  even  his  dear- 
est foe  would  dower  that  artist  with  great  men- 
tal ability.  But  he  is  more  feminine  than  any 
woman  in  his  tactile  sensibilities.  Joseffy  has 
far  more  intellectuality ;  Paderewski  is  more 
poetic.  All  three  are,  as  all  musical  artists 
284 


THE    ETERNAL    FEMININE 

should  be,  feminine  in  their  delicacy  of  tem- 
perament. 

Where,  then,  does  woman  enter  this  race,  a 
race  in  which  sex  traditions  are  topsy-turvied  ? 
If  women  are  deficient  in  brain  weight,  in  ner- 
vous and  spiritual  powers,  how  is  it  that  they 
dare  attempt  Chopin  at  all  ? 

Because,  patient  reader  —  and  now  I  begin 
to  draw  in  the  very  large  loop  I  have  made  — 
men  of  science  deal  with  the  palpable,  and  the 
time  for  measuring  and  weighing  the  impalpable 
has  not  yet  arrived.  Because  there  is  no  sex  in 
music,  and  because  you  may  not  be  very  moral 
or  very  intellectual,  and  yet  play  Chopin  like 
"a  little  god"  —  as  Pachmann  would  say.  And 
now  for  my  most  triumphant  contention  :  if  the 
majority  of  women  play  Chopin  abominably  — 
so  do  the  majority  of  men  ! 

II 

"It  may  indeed,"  answered  Amelia;  "and  I 
am  so  sensible  of  it  that  unless  you  have  a  mind 
to  see  me  faint  before  your  face,  I  beg  you  will 
order  me  something  —  a  glass  of  water  if  you 
please."  And  then  that  most  fascinating  chroni- 
cler, Henry  Fielding,  Esq.,  proceeds  to  relate 
the  further  history  of  Captain  Booth's  good 
lady,  but  not  until  Mrs.  Bennet  infuses  some 
"  hartshorn  drops "  into  a  glass  of  water  for 
her.  All  this  was  about  1750.  Since  then 
285 


OVERTONES 

Miss  Austen  and  her  troop  of  youthful  crea- 
tures, swooninsfto  order,  have  stolen  with  charm- 
ing  graces  across  the  canvas  of  fiction ;  the 
young  woman  of  1750,  with  her  needles  and 
her  scruples,  has  quite  vanished ;  and  passed 
away  is  the  girl  who  played  the  piano  in  the 
stiff  Victorian  drawing-rooms  of  our  mothers. 
It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  slippery  hair- 
cloth sofas  and  the  Battle  of  Prague  dwelt  in 
mutual  harmony.  And  now  at  the  beginning 
of  the  century  the  girls  who  devote  time  to  the 
keyboard  merely  for  the  purpose  of  social  dis- 
play are  almost  as  rare  as  the  lavender  water 
ladies  of  morbid  sensibilities  in  the  Richardson 
and  Fielding  novels.  It  was  one  of  the  new 
English  essayists  who  wrote  of  The  Decay  of 
Sensibility.  He  meant  the  Jane  Austen  girl ; 
but  I  wonder  if  the  musical  girl  of  the  old  sort 
may  not  be  also  set  down  for  study  —  the  study 
we  accord  to  rare  and  disappearing  types.  Yet 
never  has  America  been  so  musical,  never  so 
crowded  the  recitals  of  popular  pianists,  while 
piano  manufacturers  bewail  the  day's  brevity,  so 
eager  for  their  instruments  is  the  public.  Here 
is  a  pretty  paradox  :  the  piano  is  passing  and 
with  it  the  piano  girl,  —  there  really  was  a  piano 
girl,  —  and  more  music  was  never  made  before 
in  the  land  ! 

Women  and  music  have  been  inseparable  in 
the  male  imagination  since  the  days  when  the 
morning  stars  sang  cosmic  chorals  in  the  vasty 
286 


THE    ETERNAL    FEMININE 

blue.  The  Old  Testament  tells  of  dancing  and 
lyrics  that  accompanied  many  sacred  offices,  and 
we  all  recall  those  music-mad  maids  who  slew 
Bacchus  for  a  mere  song.  Women  played  upon 
shawm  and  psaltery,  and  to  her  fate  went  dancing 
with  measured  tones  the  daughter  of  Jephthah. 
I  am  not  sure  but  Judith  crooned  a  melody  for 
the  ravished  ears  of  Holof ernes.  An  early  keyed 
instrument  was  named  in  honor  of  woman  —  the 
virginal — and  the  first  printed  piece  of  English 
music  was  called  Parthenia.  On  the  title-page 
is  represented  a  simpering  and  rather  blowzy 
young  woman  of  Rubens-like  physique,  playing 
upon  a  virginal,  her  fingers  in  delightfully  im- 
possible curlicues.  This  piece  was  engraved  in 
1611.  A  variety  of  pictures,  some  as  early  as 
1440,  show  the  inevitable  girl  seated  at  the 
spinet,  or  clavichord.  There  is  a  painting  by 
Jan  Steen  in  the  London  National  Gallery, 
depicting  an  awkward  Dutch  miss  fingering  the 
keys,  and  a  Gerard  Ter  Borch  at  the  Royal 
Museum,  Berlin,  reveals  a  woman  of  generous 
breadth  playing  upon  a  violoncello.  She  ap- 
pears to  be  handling  her  bow  like  a  professional ; 
and  she  is,  strange  to  say,  left-handed.  Ample 
are  the  facts  relating  to  the  important  role  enacted 
by  woman  as  interpretative  artist.  To  no  less 
an  authority  has  been  ascribed — wrongly,  I  sus- 
pect—  a  certain  aphorism  which  places  in  curi- 
ous sequence  wine,  woman,  and  song.  It  was 
the  woman  who  entertained  that  then  was  con- 
287 


OVERTONES 

sidered.  She  pleased  the  rude  warrior,  fatigued 
by  the  chase  or  war,  and  with  her  dainty  tin- 
klings  soothed  his  sottish  brain.  Like  music, 
woman  was  a  handmaiden.  With  the  emanci- 
pation of  the  art  from  churchly  rubric  came  its 
worldly  victories.  In  the  brilliant  spaces  of  the 
concert  room  the  piano  was  king,  and  not  seldom 
a  king  subdued  by  queenly  fingers.  The  male 
virtuoso,  surely  a  thing  of  gorgeous  vanities,  soon 
had  his  feminine  complement.  The  woman  who 
played  the  piano  appeared  in  Europe  ;  and  there 
were  those  that  predicted  the  millennium.  In 
the  eighteenth  century  pianos  had  sconces  in 
which  burned  candles,  while  charming  women, 
hair  powdered  and  patch  on  face,  played  Haydn, 
attempted  Scarlatti,  and  greatly  wondered  at  the 
famously  difficult  music  of  Mozart.  Beethoven, 
a  loutish  young  man  of  unbearable  habits,  wrote 
music  that  was  not  to  be  thought  of  —  it  was  sim- 
ply not  playable.  To  be  sure,  a  few  grand  ladies 
who  gave  themselves  superior  airs  of  culture  — 
as  do  Ibsen  girls  to-day  — attempted  the  Beetho- 
ven sonatas  in  the  presence  of  the  composer, 
who,  quite  deaf,  lolled  complacently  in  their  draw- 
ing-rooms and  betimes  picked  his  teeth  with  the 
candle  snuffers.  But  there  was  sterner  stuff  in 
the  next  generation.  After  Camilla  Pleycl  came 
Madame  de  Belleville-Oury,  admired  of  Chopin, 
and  the  transition  to  the  modern  piano-play- 
ing women,  Clara  Schumann,  Annette  Essipoff, 
Sophie  Menter,  Teresa  Carreiio,  was  an  easy  one 
288 


THE   ETERNAL   FEMININE 

The  latter  half  of  this  century  has  witnessed 
an  intense  devotion  to  a  barren  ideal.  Years 
previous  to  the  advent  of  the  sewing-machine 
there  burst  upon  the  civilized  globe  a  musical 
storm  of  great  magnitude.  Every  girl  whose 
parents  respected  themselves  was  led  almost 
manacled  to  the  keyboard,  and  there  made  to 
play  at  least  one  hour  out  of  the  twenty-four. 
This  was  before  the  age  of  eight;  after  that 
crumby  and  pinafore  period  an  hour  was  added, 
and  O,  the  tortures  of  her  generation  and  the 
generation  that  succeeded  her  !  Veritable  slaves 
of  the  ivory,  they  worked  like  the  Niebelungs 
for  a  stern  Alberich,  who  pocketed  the  hoard 
of  their  fathers  and  rapped  their  cold,  thin, 
and  despairing  fingers  with  a  lead  pencil  —  one 
usually  "made  in  Germany."  With  what  in- 
fantile malignancy  was  regarded  the  lead  pen- 
cil of  the  German  music-master !  Why,  even  as 
I  write,  my  very  sentence  assumes  an  Ollendorf- 
fian  cast  because  of  the  harrowing  atmosphere 
conjured  up  by  that  same  irritable  Teutonic 
pencil-wielder.  Piano  music  of  those  days  was 
a  thing  of  horror.  Innumerable  variations  and 
the  sonatina  that  stupefied  were  supplemented 
by  diabolical  finger  studies  without  end.  One 
hour  after  breakfast,  one  hour  after  luncheon,  and 
in  the  evening  a  little  music  to  soothe  digestion 
and  drive  away  dull  drink  —  something  of  this 
sort  was  the  daily  musical  scheme  of  our  nat- 
ural rulers.  Every  girl  played  the  piano.  Not 
u  28Q 


OVERTONES 

to  play  the  instrument  was  a  stigma  of  poverty. 
The  harp  went  out  with  the  Byronic  pose, 
though  harp-playing  was  deemed  "  a  fine,  lady- 
like accomplishment  "  until  the  Civil  War.  But 
a  harp  is  a  troublesome  instrument  "  to  keep  in 
order  "  ;  it  needs  skilled  attention  —  above  all, 
careful  tuning.  Now  the  piano  is  cheaper  than 
the  harp  —  I  mean  some  pianos  —  and  it  is  the 
only  instrument  I  know  of  that  is  played  upon 
with  evident  delight  when  out  of  tune.  Even 
the  banjo  is  tuned  at  times ;  the  average  piano 
so  rarely  that  it  resents  the  operation  and 
speedily  relapses  below  pitch.  Because  of  its 
unmusical  nature,  a  very  uncomplaining  beast 
of  burden,  the  piano  was  bound  to  drive  out  the 
harp  ;  it  is  more  easily  "  worked,"  and,  by  reason 
of  its  shape,  a  more  useful  piece  of  furniture. 
Atop  of  a  piano  may  be  placed  anything,  from 
a  bonnet  to  an  ice-cream  freezer;  indeed,  stories 
are  told  of  heartless  persons  using  it  for  a  couch; 
and  once  a  party  of  French  explorers  discovered 
on  the  coast  of  Africa  an  individual,  oily  but 
royal,  who  had  removed  the  action  and  wires  of 
a  grand  piano  and  used  the  interior  for  his  per- 
manent abode.  The  unfortunate  instrument  had 
drifted  ashore  from  a  wreck. 

Other  reasons,  too,  there  are  for  the  supplant- 
ing of  the  harp  by  its  more  stolid  half-brother, 
the  piano — bigger  brother,  a  noisier,  more  as- 
sertive one,  and  a  magnificent  stop-gap  for  the 
creaking  pauses  of  the  drawing-room  machinery. 
290 


THE    ETERNAL    FEMININE 

And  how  nobly  it  covers  thin  talk  with  a  dense 
mantle  of  crackling  tones !  A  provoker  of 
speech,  an  urger  to  after-dinner  eloquence,  the 
piano  will  be  remembered  in  the  hereafter  as 
the  greatest  social  implement  of  last  century's 
latter  half. 

Liszts  in  petticoats  have  been  so  numerous 
during  the  past  twenty-five  years  as  to  escape 
classification.  It  was  the  girl  who  did  not  play 
that  was  singled  out  as  an  oddity.  For  one 
Sonia  Kovalesky  and  her  rare  mastery  of  math- 
ematics there  were  a  million  slaves  of  the  ivory. 
Not  even  the  sewing-machine  routed  the  piano, 
though  it  dealt  it  a  dangerous  body  blow.  Trea- 
dles and  pedals  are  not  so  far  asunder,  and  a 
neat  piano  technique  has  been  found  quite  use- 
ful by  the  ardent  typewriter.  What  this  pres- 
ent generation  of  children  has  to  be  especially 
thankful  for  is  its  immunity  from  useless  piano 
practice.  Unless  there  is  discovered  a  sharply 
defined  aptitude,  a  girl  is  kept  away  from  the 
stool  and  pedals.  Instead  of  the  crooked  back 
—  in  Germany  known  as  the  piano  back — and 
relentless  technical  studies,  our  young  woman 
golfs,  cycles,  rows,  runs,  fences,  dances,  and 
pianolas  !  While  she  once  wearied  her  heart 
playing  Gottschalk,  she  now  plays  tennis,  and 
she  freely  admits  that  tennis  is  greater  than 
Thalberg.  Recall  the  names  of  all  the  great 
women's  colleges,  recall  their  wonderful  curricu- 
lums,  and  note  with  unprejudiced  eyes  their 
291 


OVERTONES 

scope  and  the  comparatively  humble  position 
occupied  by  music.  In  a  word,  I  wish  to  point 
out  that  piano-playing  as  an  accomplishment  is 
passing.  Girls  play  the  piano  as  a  matter  of 
course  when  they  have  nimble  fingers  and  care 
for  it.  Life  has  become  too  crowded,  too  vari- 
ously beautiful,  for  a  woman  without  marked 
musical  gifts  to  waste  it  at  the  piano. 

Begun  as  a  pastime,  a  mere  social  adjunct  of 
the  overfed,  music,  the  heavenly  maid,  was 
pressed  into  unwilling  service  at  the  piano,  and 
at  times  escorted  timid  youths  to  the  proposing 
point,  or  eked  out  the  deadly  lethargy  of  even- 
ings in  respectable  homes.  Girls  had  to  pull  the 
teeth  of  this  artistic  monster,  the  pianoforte,  else 
be  accounted  frumps  without  artistic  or  social 
ambitions.  Unlike  that  elephant  which  refused 
to  play  a  Bach  fugue  on  the  piano,  because,  as 
the  showman  tearfully  explained,  the  animal 
shudderingly  recognized  the  ivory  of  the  tusks 
of  its  mother,  the  girl  of  the  middle  century 
went  about  her  task  muddled  in  wits,  but  with 
matrimony  as  her  ultimate  goal.  To-day  she  has 
forsaken  the  "lilies  and  languors"  of  Chopin, 
and  the  "  roses  and  raptures  "  of  Schumann,  and 
if  she  must  have  music,  she  goes  to  a  piano  recital 
and  hears  a  great  artist  interpret  her  favorite 
composer,  thus  unconsciously  imitating  the  East- 
ern potentate  who  boasted  that  he  had  his  danc- 
ing done  for  him.  The  new  girl  is  too  busy  to 
play  the  piano  unless  she  has  the  gift ;  then  she 
292 


THE    ETERNAL    FEMININE 

plays  it  with  consuming  earnestness.  We  listen 
to  her,  for  we  know  that  this  is  an  age  of  special- 
ization, an  age  when  woman  is  coming  into  her 
own,  be  it  nursing,  electoral  suffrage,  or  the  writ- 
ing of  plays  ;  so  poets  no  longer  make  sonnets  to 
our  Ladies  of  Ivories,  nor  are  budding  girls 
chained  to  the  keyboard.  Never  has  the  piano 
been  so  carefully  studied  as  it  is  to-day,  and,  par- 
adoxical as  it  may  sound,  never  has  the  tendency 
of  music  been  diverted  to  currents  so  contrary  to 
the  genius  of  the  instrument.  All  this  is  better 
for  woman  —  and  for  the  development  of  her  art 
along  broader,  nobler  lines.  The  tone-poem  and 
music-drama  are  now  our  ideals,  and  I  dare  pub- 
lish my  belief  that  in  this  year  of  grace  there 
has  been  born  one  who  will  live  to  see  the  decay 
of  the  piano  recital.  He  may  be  a  centenarian 
before  this  change  is  wrought,  but  witness  it  he 
will,  for  music,  of  all  arts,  changes  most  its 
vesture. 

Ill 

Balzac,  master  of  souls,  knower  of  the  heart 
feminine,  made  his  lovely  Princesse  de  Cadignan 
say  to  the  enamored  Daniel  d'Arthez  :  "  I  have 
often  heard  miserable  specimens  regret  that 
they  were  women,  wish  that  they  were  men ;  I 
have  always  looked  upon  them  with  pity.  .  .  . 
If  I  had  to  choose  I  would  still  prefer  to  be  a 
woman.  A  fine  pleasure  it  is  to  have  to  owe 
one's  triumph  to  strength,  to  all  the  powers  that 
293 


OVERTONES 

are  given  you  by  the  laws  made  by  you  !  But 
when  we  see  you  at  our  feet,  uttering  and  doing 
sillinesses,  is  it  not  then  an  intoxicating  happiness 
to  feel  one's  self  the  weakness  that  triumphs  ? 
When  we  succeed  we  are  obliged  to  keep  silent 
under  pain  of  losing  our  empire.  Beaten  women 
are  still  obliged  to  keep  silent  through  pride. 
The  silence  of  the  slave  frightens  the  master." 

This  was  written  in  1839.  If  Balzac  had  lived 
a  half-century,  he  would  have  painted  full-length 
portraits  of  women  who  keep  quiet  neither  in 
triumph  nor  in  defeat ;  and  at  whose  feet  ped- 
als, not  men,  register  new  emotional  expe- 
riences —  for  the  pedals  of  the  piano  are  the 
soul  of  it.  To  be  ashamed  of  one's  sex  nowa- 
days would  be  an  insane  confession  wrung  from 
some  poor  overworked  creature,  one  to  whom 
the  French  novelist  might  refuse  even  the  name 
of  woman.  Females  may  deny  the  beauty  of  be- 
ing born  to  wear  petticoats  ;  women,  never.  In- 
deed, the  boot  is  now  on  the  masculine  leg.  As 
the  current  phraseology  runs,  Woman  has  found 
herself.  She  has  also  found  a  panacea  for  irri- 
tated vanity  and  indigestion,  at  one  time  called 
in  romances  a  broken  heart.  This  prophylactic 
is  art ;  and  when  it  is  used  intelligently,  misery 
flies  forth  from  the  window  as  music  opens  the 
door. 

Once,  for  the  sheer  fun  of  it,  I  made  an  imagi- 
nary classification  of  music  which  various  hero- 
ines of  fiction  preferred,  or,  rather,  might  prefer 
294 


THE    ETERNAL   FEMININE 

—  for  many  of  them  are,  as  you  know,  tone- 
deaf.  Mr.  Howells  remarked  this  years  ago. 
But  consider  Clarissa  Harlowe,  or  any  of  the  im- 
mortal Jane's  brood  —  do  they  not  all  suggest 
musical  possibilities  ?  What  a  paper  that  would 
be  to  read  before  a  mothers'  meeting  on  a  sultry 
day  in  September! — The  Musical  Tastes  of 
Fiction's  Heroines.  And  with  what  facile 
logic,  the  logic  of  numbers,  a  clever  girl  could 
unhorse  her  ruder  opponents.  The  theme  fas- 
cinates me;  I  am  loath  to  leave  it.  Think  of 
the  year  1800!  Beethoven  had  written  some 
piano  sonatas,  but  was  not  very  well  known 
abroad.  In  London  town  there  were  still  harp- 
sichords, and  Scarlatti  and  Mozart.  The  modern 
grand  piano  was  a  dream  that  nestled  in  the  later 
sonatas  of  Beethoven  —  and  in  the  brain  of  their 
maker.  Tone  was  not  thought  of ;  while  a 
pearly  touch,  smooth  scales,  and  crisp  little 
rhythms  were  affected  by  such  women  as 
spared  the  time  to  practise  from  their  social 
duties.  The  piano  music  of  the  eighteenth 
century  was  written  for  women,  is  woman's 
music.  All  these  virginals,  spinets,  clavecins, 
clavichords,  harpsichords,  are  they  not  feminine  ? 
Are  they  not  the  musical  rib  plucked  by  an  ami- 
able fate  from  the  side  of  the  masculine  church 
organ  ?  Historical  retrospects  gall  the  mind  at 
all  times,  but  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  consider  the 
century's  piano  music  which  preceded  ours. 
Out  of  the  old  dance  suites  burgeoned  latter- 
295 


OVERTONES 

day  piano  music.  Those  graceful  writers  of 
old  Italy  and  old  France  made  gay  melodies, 
full  of  the  artificial  life  of  their  time,  of  their 
surroundings.  You  catch  glimpses  of  delicate 
faces,  with  patches,  powdered  heads,  courtly 
struttings,  and  the  sounds  of  courtly  wooing. 
The  stately  minuetto,  lively  courantes,  decorous 
allemandes,  smooth  sarabands,  tripping  gavottes 
and  gigues,  —  all  these,  and  many  more  with 
high-colored  titles,  enchanted  our  great-great- 
grandmothers.  The  more  tragic  note  was  not 
missing,  either.  They  had  L' Homicide  and 
the  Fair  Murderess,  and  any  number  of  pieces 
named  after  tears,  anger,  caprice,  sorrow,  revenge 
and  desire.  Animals  and  the  gods  of  Greece 
and  Rome  were  quoted;  flanked  by  wax  candles, 
with  suitors  smirking  at  the  side  of  them,  and 
peering  in  front  of  them,  fair  women  played 
music,  played  it  with  genteel  gravity  or  bewitch- 
ing coquetry ;  played  Scarlatti  and  Emanuel 
Bach,  and  all  for  the  love  of  art  —  and  perhaps 
a  matrimonial  future.  Let  it  be  remarked,  en 
passant,  that  the  keyboard,  vastly  modified,  de- 
veloped and  improved  as  it  is,  is  still  a  favorite 
weapon  of  feminine  offence.  Just  here  get 
down  your  Browning  from  the  shelf  and  con- 
sider A  Toccata  of  Galuppi's. 

Of  Bach,  the  giant,  we  do  not  read  in  the 
diaries,  letters,  and  books  of  this  fashionable 
epoch.  That  grim  old  forge-master  of  fugues 
would    hardly  have  appealed  to  the  dreams  of 


THE    ETERNAL    FEMININE 

fair  women,  even  had  they  been  cognizant  of  his 
existence.  Handel's  piano  music  was  more  to 
their  taste ;  his  suites,  classical  and  solid  in 
character,  are  full  of  brightly  said  things,  and 
lie  well  for  the  instrument.  Joseph  Haydn, 
owing  much  to  Bach's  son  Emanuel,  wrote 
pleasing  music,  light  music,  for  the  piano.  His 
sonatas  are  not  difficult,  were  not  difficult  for 
those  ladies  who  could  fluently  finger  Scarlatti. 
This  Italian,  with  his  witty  skippings,  rapid 
hand-crossings,  and  implacable  vivacity,  is  still 
rainbow  gold  for  most  feminine  wrists.  Mozart, 
the  sweetly  lyric,  the  mellifluous  and  ever  gay 
Mozart,  made  sonatas  as  gods  carve  the  cosmos. 
Every  form  he  touched  he  beautified.  The 
piano  sonatas,  written  for  money,  written  with 
ease,  were  also  written  with  both  eyes  on  the 
fair  amateur  of  the  period.  She  admired 
Mozart  more  than  Haydn;  his  music  was  melo- 
dious, his  decorative  patterns  prettier.  So 
Mozart  raged  in  the  hearts  of  the  ladies,  and 
slender  fingers  troubled  the  chaste  outlines  of 
his  sonatas.  His  eighteenth  sonata,  preceded 
by  a  fantasia  in  the  same  key  —  C  minor  — 
alone  impeded  the  flight  of  these  butterflies. 
In  it  were  mutterings  of  the  music  that  awed 
and  thrilled  in  Don  Giovanni,  and  it  was  a  pre- 
cursor of  Beethoven  and  his  mighty  thunderings. 
Behold  the  conqueror  approaches,  the  Bona- 
parte, the  Buonarroti,  the  Balzac  of  music  — 
Ludwig  van  Beethoven.  In  the  track  of  his 
297 


OVERTONES 

growling  tempests  followed  women,  nobly  nur- 
tured, charming  women  of  fashion,  Nanette 
Streicher,  Baroness  Ertmann,  Julia  Guicciardi, 
Therese,  Bettina,  and  many  more  besides.  They 
played  for  him,  and  he,  great  genius  and  despiser 
of  idle  conventions,  stretched  his  stout  short 
body  out  upon  drawing-room  couches. 

It  is  not  a  pretty  picture  this,  but  is  a  char- 
acteristic. It  must  please  latter-day  pagans 
who  flout  the  niceties  of  society.  Not  all  the 
Beethoven  sonatas  were  admired  to  the  study- 
ing point.  The  early  ones  —  mere  exercises  of 
a  young  athlete  juggling  with  the  weapons  of 
his  grandsire  —  alone  called  for  commendation. 
Dedicated  to  Haydn,  the  first  three  did  not 
excite  the  ire  of  critics  or  teachers.  But  as  the 
man  grew,  as  he  felt,  suffered,  and  knew,  then 
his  canvases  began  to  excite  fear  and  repulsion. 
"  Why  these  gloomy  tints,  Herr  van  Beethoven?" 
they  cried,  and  listened  eagerly  to  his  rivals, 
the  Wolffls,  the  Gelineks,  the  Hummels.  There 
is  a  modishness  even  in  the  art  of  writing  for 
the  piano,  and  Beethoven  despised  modishness, 
as  would  have  Diana  of  the  Ephesians  the  mil- 
linery of  Lutetia.  So  he  was  neglected  for  a 
half-century,  and  the  long-fingered,  long-haired 
virtuosi  overran  Europe,  with  their  variations, 
their  fantasias,  their  trills,  and  their  trickeries. 
From  Hummel  to  Thalberg  effect  was  their 
god,  and  before  the  shrine  of  the  titillating,  the 
ornamental  and  the  suave,  womankind  prostrated 
298 


THE   ETERNAL   FEMININE 

herself,  pouring  out  homage  and  gold  —  the 
latter  provided  by  patient  fathers  and  husbands. 
It  was  a  carnage,  a  musical  rout,  and  a  superior 
warrior  like  Liszt  trailed  thousands  of  scalps 
after  his  chariots  during  triumphal  tours.  The 
mediaeval  dancing  manias  were  as  nothing  when 
compared  with  the  hysteria  evoked  by  the  new 
Pied  Piper  of  Hungary.  Chopin  never  had  the 
physique,  and  Mendelssohn  was  too  moral,  to 
copy  Liszt.  These  two  men  wrote  lovely  music, 
feminine  music ;  while^  down  in  Vienna  a  young 
man  named  Schubert  died,  after  writing  incom- 
parable songs  and  much  beautiful  piano  music. 
His  sonatas  are  not  so  feminine  in  texture  as  his 
musical  Moments,  impromptus  and  dances.  This 
music  is  made  for  woman,  with  its  intimate,  tender 
feeling,  its  loose  and  variegated  structure.  Von 
Weber  composed  chivalric  sonatas  and  that 
marvellous  epitome  of  the  dance,  The  Invita- 
tion. Schumann,  broken  in  fingers  through  too 
curious  experimentings,  dreamed  twilight  music, 
which  his  gifted  wife  Clara  interpreted  to  an 
incredulous  world. 

Since  then  the  rest  is  history.  Women  vir- 
tuosi are  as  plentiful  as  the  shining  sands,  be- 
ginning with  Clara  Schumann  and  ending  with 
the  prodigy  of  yesterday.  Such  thunderers  as 
Sophie  Menter  and  Teresa  Carreflo,  women  of 
iron  will  and  great  muscular  power,  and  a  subtle 
interpreter  like  Annette  Essipoff,  challenge 
men  in  their  own  sphere,  and  relatively  hold 
299 


OVERTONES 

their  own.  I  say  relatively ;  and  now  comes 
into  view  a  serious  question.  It  is  this  :  Should 
women  essay  the  music  of  all  composers  ?  The 
answer  is  in  the  affirmative,  for  who  shall  assert 
that  a  severe  course  of  Bach,  Beethoven,  and 
Brahms  may  result  in  aught  else  but  good.  But 
do  women  interpret  all  composers  with  equal 
success  ?  The  answer  is  here  decidedly  a  nega- 
tive one.  Though  I  have  heard  Menter  play 
Liszt's  rhapsodies  with  overwhelming  brilliancy, 
though  I  have  listened  to  Carreno  in  amazement 
as  she  crashed  out  Chopin's  F  sharp  minor  polo- 
naise on  her  Steinway,  yet  I  know  that  the  brawn 
and  brain  of  this  pair  are  exceptional.  Half  a 
dozen  such  do  not  appear  during  a  century. 
Therefore  big  tonal  effects,  called  orchestral  by 
the  critics,  are  usually  not  to  be  found  in  the  per- 
formances of  women.  For  that  reason  I  enjoy 
the  playing  of  women  who  are  genuinely  feminine 
in  their  style  —  Essipoff  or  Madame  Zeisler. 
Smoothness,  neatness,  delicacy,  brilliancy,  and 
a  certain  grace  are  common  enough.  The  aver- 
age woman  pianist  is  a  hard  student,  and  strives 
to  achieve  that  which  men  easily  accomplish. 
As  a  rule  she  has  finger  facility,  a  plentiful 
lack  of  rhythm,  and  no  particular  interpretative 
power  —  exactly  the  qualities  of  the  average 
male  pianist.  When  Maud  Powell  plays  Bach  or 
Beethoven  on  her  violin  we  are  amazed  and  say, 
"  Why,  this  is  virile  !  "  When  Fanny  Bloom- 
field-Zeisler  delivers  the  scherzo  from  the  Litolff 
300 


THE    ETERNAL    FEMININE 

concerto,  we  are  surprised  —  not  at  her  swift- 
ness, ease,  or  delicacy,  but  at  her  nervous  force 
and  bravura  —  these  latter  being  selfishly  an- 
nexed by  men  as  eminently  masculine  attributes. 
Are  they  ?  Certain  feminine  Wagner  singers 
possess  them,  and  in  opera  they  are  accepted  as 
a  matter  of  course.  A  genuine  paradox,  is  it  not? 
The  muscular  conformation  of  a  woman's  arm 
militates  against  her  throwing  a  stone  as  far  as 
a  man  ;  it  also  operates  adversely  in  modern 
piano-playing,  where  the  triceps  muscles  are  a 
necessity  for  a  broad,  sonorous  tone.  I  have 
considered  the  pros  and  cons  of  emotional  in- 
tensity in  writing  of  woman  as  a  Chopin  player, 
and  shall  not  again  traverse  that  barren  and  un- 
grateful region.  The  intellect  remains  to  be 
discussed.  Are  women  intellectual  in  the  in- 
terpretative sense  ?  Yes.  Without  hesitation 
I  answer  this  question,  for  music,  apart  from 
the  creative  side,  is  a  feminine  art,  and  one  in 
which  woman's  intuitions  lead  her  many  leagues 
toward  success.  That  women  have  as  yet  — 
you  mark  my  use  of  a  future  contingency  !  — 
that  women  have  as  yet  exhibited  powers  of 
interpretation  as  keen,  as  original,  or  even  on  a 
par  with  men,  I  am  not  prepared  to  say.  Il- 
luminative in  Bach  or  Beethoven  they  are  not, 
though  delightfully  poetic  in  Schumann  and 
Chopin.  I  have  never  heard  a  woman  play  the 
Hammer-Klavier  Sonata,  opus  106,  of  Beetho- 
ven with  force,  lucidity,  or  imaginative  lift. 
301 


OVERTONES 

Enfin :  The  lesson  of  the  years  seems  to  be 
that  women  can  play  anything  written  for  the 
piano,  and  play  it  well.  In  all  the  music  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  in  the  sonatas  of  Haydn, 
Mozart,  and  the  early  Beethoven,  in  Hummel, 
Weber,  Schubert,  Mendelssohn,  some  of  Schu- 
mann, some  of  Chopin,  a  goodly  portion  of  Liszt, 
all  of  Field,  Heller,  Hiller,  Moszkowski,  Grieg, 
Scharwenka,  and  a  moiety  of  Brahms, —  all  these 
composers  have  been  essayed  with  success. 
Bach's  Well-tempered  Clavichord  should  be  the 
bread  and  butter  of  a  woman's  musical  menu  ; 
it  should  begin  and  end  her  day.  One  may 
quote  Balzac  again  —  that  dear  Princesse  de  Ca- 
dignan,  sometimes  called  Madame  la  Duchesse 
Maufrigneuse,  "Women  know  how  to  give  to 
their  words  a  peculiar  saintliness  ;  they  commu- 
nicate to  them  I  know  not  what  of  vibration, 
which  extends  the  sense  of  their  ideas  and  lends 
them  profundity  ;  if  later,  their  charmed  auditor 
no  longer  recalls  what  they  have  said,  the  object 
has  been  completely  attained,  which  is  the  proper 
quality  of  eloquence."  And  of  this  species  of 
eloquence  is  a  woman's  playing  of  Bach  and 
Beethoven  and  Brahms.  It  is  often  charming ; 
but  is  it  ever  great,  spiritual,  moving  art  ? 

The  woman  question  —  is  it  not  one  to  be 
shunned  ?  I  mean  the  question,  not  the  theme 
itself,  though  one  may  recommend  Laura  Mar- 
holm's  volumes.  Frau  Marholm  is  a  Scandi- 
navian, and  Northern  women  must  have  been 
302 


THE    ETERNAL   FEMININE 

bound  with  iron  social  gyves,  to  judge  by  the 
quality  of  their  protestant  literature.  Ibsen, 
Bjornson,  even  Strindberg — whose  erratic  pen- 
dulum swings  to  the  other  extreme  —  are  full  of 
the  heady  polemics  of  sex.  Sex  —  why,  one  sick- 
ens of  the  subject  after  reading  problem  plays 
and  novels.  To  all  American  women  between 
the  ages  of  eighteen  and  eighty  I  say  study 
Laura  Marholm's  Studies  in  the  Psychology  of 
Woman.  The  dissatisfied  ones,  those  who  really 
believe  all  they  read,  may  perhaps  realize  how 
much  better  off  is  The  Unquiet  Sex  —  this  capi- 
tal phrase  is  of  Helen  Watterson  Moody's  coin- 
ing—  in  America.  Little  wonder  that  there 
is  a  woman  movement  in  Europe.  For  its  psy- 
chology read  Marholm.  Best  of  all,  here  is  a 
woman  telling  us  secrets,  secrets  not  to  be 
captured  by  men  watchful  of  the  Sphinx  that 
Defies.  And  it  is  a  sad  corrective  for  mas- 
culine presumption,  masculine  vanity.  We  are 
only  tolerated.  Some  of  us  have  known  that 
for  years ;  here  it  is  elevated  to  the  dignity 
of  a  psychological  system.  These  long-haired, 
soft-eyed  animals,  as  Guy  de  Maupassant  de- 
scribed them,  are  our  true  critics  weighing  us 
ever  in  scales  that  are  mortifyingly  candid,  excus- 
ing us  if  they  love  us,  but  after  all  only  tolerating 
7ts,  allowing  the  lords  of  creation  to  kneel  in 
humble  attitudes  at  the  shrine  and  rewarded  at 
the  end  by  —  toleration.  And  if  this  is  the  case 
on  the  Continent,  where  the  equality  of  women 
303 


OVERTONES 

is  as  yet  a  half-hatched  idea,  how  is  it  in  Amer- 
ica, where  she  is  queen,  queen  from  kitchen  to 
palace  ?  I  think  Mrs.  Marholm  herself  would  be 
amazed,  and  mayhap  after  five  years'  residence 
here  would  write  a  book  about  the  Wrongs  of 
Man.  Her  Six  Famous  Women  betrays  the 
writer's  keenness  of  vision,  the  Studies  reveal 
breadth  of  idea  and  judgments.  She  does  not 
belong  to  the  "  Shrieking  Sisterhood."  She  is 
a  woman,  a  defender  of  home  and  family.  I 
assure  you  I  enjoyed  her  book  far  better  than 
Zola's  Fecondite  —  that  most  miraculously  dull 
and  moral  tract.  Tolstoy  is  the  remote  parent 
of  both  books,  though  Marholm  has  her  own 
feminine  point  of  attack.  No  man  may  hope  to 
understand  women  as  does  a  woman.  It  was 
Zangwill,  I  think,  who  said  that  all  women 
writers  are  of  value  —  do  they  not  tell  us  the 
secrets  of  their  sex  ?  This  is  hardly  polite,  but 
it  is  true.  When  the  "messages"  of  George 
Eliot  and  Charlotte  Bronte  have  grown  stale 
from  usage  —  all  truths  breed  rust  after  a  time 
—  their  unconscious  self-portraitures  will  pre- 
serve them  from  those  giant  moths,  the  critics. 
The  Marholm  knows  better  than  any  envious 
male  the  limitations  of  woman  as  artist,  politi- 
cian, and  writer.  In  the  admirable  study  of  Mrs. 
Besant  she  writes  :  "  She  has  always  possessed 
the  wholly  feminine  capacity  of  assimilating  the 
most  varied  and  incompatible  mental  food,  with- 
out disturbance  or  indigestion,  and  of  giving  it 
304 


THE   ETERNAL   FEMININE 

forth  with  a  certain  accuracy ;  her  brain  was 
like  a  photographic  plate  upon  which  the  ex- 
posed picture  is  clearly  and  mechanically  printed. 
These  characteristics,  the  quick  perception  and 
exact  repetition,  are  frequently  praised  by  pro- 
fessors who  examine  feminine  students,  and 
many  have  declared  that  in  eagerness  for  knowl- 
edge and  ability  to  acquire  it,  women  excel  men. 
It  is  undeniable  that  in  these  characteristics 
they  excel  most  men  ;  it  would  be  a  pity  if  most 
men  excelled  them,  for  these  characteristics  rest 
upon  the  lesser  power  and  capacity  for  original 
thought,  independent  selection,  and  deeper  affin- 
ity to  the  appropriate  idea ;  they  depend  upon  a 
mechanical  instead  of  an  organic  process." 

This  is  not  a  pleasing  paragraph,  but  it  shows 
the  writer's  style  of  argument.  She  girds  with 
something  approaching  violence  at  the  milk-and- 
water  men  of  the  day,  declaring  that  Woman's 
Emancipation  is  the  result  of  some  deficiency 
in  modern  manhood.  However,  read  Marholm 
and  draw  your  own  pictures  of  what  women 
should  or  should  not  be.  A  charming  woman 
told  me  that  she  had  asked  Jean  de  Reszke  if  he 
cared  to  sing  Romeo  or  Tristan  with  any  partic- 
ular singer. 

"  I  always  sing  to  my  ideal  woman,"  replied 
the  artist.  And  I  fancy  that  we  all  pursue  that 
illuding  composite.  It  is  Woman  who  composes 
all  the  great  music,  paints  all  the  great  pictures, 
writes  all  the  great  poems  —  Woman  the  inspirer 
x  305 


OVERTONES 

of  all  art!  Is  She,  after  all,  our  coast  of  Bo- 
hemia ?  Then  mankind,  from  the  torrid  time  of 
undifferentiated  protozoa,  has  been  frantically 
striving  to  acquire  a  footing  upon  that  fascinat- 
ing territory. 


306 


IX 

AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 
I 

THE  CAPRICE  OF  THE  MUSICAL  CAT 

Few  critics  are  prophets  honored  in  their  own 
musical  country,  and  but  one  or  two  in  a  gener- 
ation possess  pr'evoyance  enough  to  predict  the 
way  the  musical  cat  will  jump.  The  antics  of 
that  exotic  feline  since  the  day  Richard  Wagner 
pinched  its  tail  and  bade  it  leap  through  the 
large  and  rather  gaudy  hoop  of  the  music- 
drama,  have  been  mystifying  and  extraordinary. 
It  coquetted  with  Brahms,  it  visited  Italy,  and 
for  a  time  took  up  its  abode  in  the  house  of 
Grieg. 

In  a  word,  caprice  of  a  deep-seated  order  has 
marked  the  progress  of  music  during  the  past 
half-century.  I  am  not  speaking  now  of  Amer- 
ica, but  of  the  world  at  large.  Chopin  died  in 
1849,  Schumann  in  1856  ;  with  them  were  buried 
the  ideals  that  lit  the  lantern  of  the  romantic 
school.  It  has  flickered  on,  this  sweet,  phos- 
phorescent signal  of  revolt,  but  chiefly  in  the 
music  of  imitators.  The  strong  light  of  the 
307 


OVERTONES 

torch  first  firmly  held  by  Bach  and  passed  on 
by  men  like  Mozart,  Beethoven,  and  Brahms 
was  not  the  sort  desired  of  the  dreamers.  For 
them  the  twilight  and  the  strange-winged  crea- 
tures bred  in  the  twilight ;  the  classical  composers 
—  who  were  romantics  in  their  time  —  loved 
too  much  the  luminary  of  day,  and  had  few 
favors  for  melancholy  and  moonshine. 

Then  came  Richard  Wagner,  revolutionist, 
genius  by  the  grace  of  God,  and  a  marvellous 
moulder  of  other  men's  ideas.  We  are  no  longer 
alarmed  by  the  senile  warnings  of  the  extreme 
right  camp ;  as  for  the  crazy  boasts  and  affirma- 
tions of  the  musical  romantics,  we  who  know 
our  Wagner  smile  at  the  godlike  things  claimed 
for  him.  He  had  genius  and  his  music  is  genu- 
ine ;  but  it  is  music  for  the  theatre,  for  the  glow 
of  the  footlights;  rhetorical  music  is  it,  and  it 
ever  strives  for  effect.  That  this  cannot  be 
music  to  touch  the  tall  stars  of  Bach  and  Bee- 
thoven we  know ;  yet  why  compare  the  two 
methods  when  they  strive  for  such  other  and 
various  things  ?  Wagner  arrogated  everything 
to  his  music-dramas ;  this  he  had  to  do  or  else 
be  left  lonely,  bawling  his  wares  to  unsympa- 
thetic listeners  in  the  market-place  of  art.  But 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  invade  its  most  sacrosanct 
precincts  to  vend  his  musical  merchandise.  And 
we  must  not  criticise  him  for  this  —  such  auc- 
tioneering in  his  case  was  absolutely  necessary. 

Wagner  caught  up  into  a  mighty  synthesis  all 
3O0 


AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 

the  loose  threads  of  romanticism,  all  the  widely 
severed  strands  of  opera.  He  studied  Bach  and 
Beethoven,  and  utilized  the  polyphony  of  the 
one,  the  symphonic  orchestra  of  the  other ;  then, 
knowing  that  opera  as  opera  on  Rossinian  lines 
had  reached  its  apogee,  and  that  Mozart  and 
Gluck  contained  in  solution  the  very  combina- 
tions he  needed,  he,  like  the  audacious  alchemist, 
the  cunning  Cagliostro  that  he  was,  made  a 
composite  that  at  first  smacked  of  German  and 
then  of  Italian.  He  ran  through  his  Rienzi, 
Flying  Dutchman,  Lohengrin,  Tannhauser  days, 
strenuously  testing  his  originality  the  mean- 
while; and  when  the  time  had  arrived  —  in  his 
case  late  in  life  —  he  calmly  threw  overboard 
old  formulas  and  served  us  the  Ring  and  the 
rest  of  his  masterpieces.  It  was  the  most  de- 
liberate chase  after  and  assumption  of  genius 
the  world  had  ever  witnessed ;  and,  strange 
as  it  seems,  the  wings  that  carried  Wagner, 
Icarus-wise,  to  the  vistas  of  the  sun  showed 
no  weaknesses,  no  threatened  and  precipitous 
meltings  To  change  the  figure  :  We  know 
that  this  conscious  composer  perfected  his  style 
with  other  men's  ideas ;  he  beat,  bruised,  bat- 
tered into  shape  a  method  of  his  own,  strong, 
individual,  and  all-sufficing  for  his  purpose.  He 
knew  that  certain  subjects  could  stand  operatic 
treatment,  and  that  your  opera  orchestra  must 
not  be  a  big  guitar,  nor  yet  as  symphonic  as 
Beethoven's.  With  the  prescience  of  genius 
309 


OVERTONES 

he  helped  himself  to  precisely  the  material  he 
wanted.  How  well  he  knew  his  needs  we  all 
realize  when  we  listen  to  Die  Meistersinger  and 
Tristan  and  Isolde. 

George  Bernard  Shaw,  in  a  long  since  van- 
ished and  brilliant  essay,  held  that  "  Wagner, 
like  most  artists  who  have  great  intellectual 
power,  was  dominated  in  the  technical  work  of 
his  gigantic  scores  by  so  strong  a  regard  for 
system,  order,  logic,  symmetry,  and  syntax  that, 
when  in  the  course  of  time  his  melody  and  har- 
mony become  perfectly  familiar  to  us,  he  will  be 
ranked  with  Handel  as  a  composer  whose  ex- 
treme regularity  of  procedure  must  make  his 
work  appear  dry  to  those  who  cannot  catch 
his  dramatic  inspiration.  If  Nordau,  having  no 
sense  of  that  inspiration,  had  said  :  '  This  fellow, 
whom  you  all  imagine  to  be  the  creator  of  a  new 
heaven  and  a  new  earth  in  music  out  of  a  chaos 
of  poetic  emotion,  is  really  an  arrant  pedant  and 
formalist,'  I  should  have  pricked  up  my  ears  and 
listened  to  him  with  some  curiosity,  knowing  how 
good  a  case  a  really  keen  technical  critic  could 
make  out  for  that  view." 

Wagner  was  the  last  of  the  great  romantics  ; 
he  closed  a  period,  did  not  begin  one.  It  is 
the  behavior  of  the  musical  cat  —  to  resume 
our  illustration  —  since  Wagner's  death  that  is 
so  puzzling  to  the  prophets.  The  sword  and 
the  cloak,  the  midnight  alarums  and  excursions 
sentimental,  occupied  for  long  the  foreground ; 
310 


AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 

but  music  discarded  adventure  when  adventure 
was  reentering  the  land  of  letters  in  the  person 
of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  —  Stevenson  who 
wore  his  panache  so  bravely  in  the  very  pres- 
ence of  Emile  Zola  and  other  evangelists  of  the 
drab  in  fiction.  A  curious  return  to  soberer 
ideals  of  form  was  led  by  Johannes  Brahms.  I 
may  add  that  this  leadership  was  unsought,  in- 
deed was  hardly  apprehended,  by  the  composer. 
A  more  unpromising  figure  for  a  musical  Mes- 
siah would  have  been  difficult  to  find.  Wagner, 
a  brilliant,  disputatious,  magnetic  man,  waged  a 
personal  propaganda ;  Brahms,  far  from  being 
the  sympathetic,  cultured  man  of  the  world  that 
Wagner  was,  lived  quietly  and  thought  highly. 
His  were  Wordsworthian  ideals ;  he  abhorred 
the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  —  this  last 
person  being  incarnate  for  him  in  the  marriage 
of  music  with  the  drama.  Yet  his  music  is  alive 
to-day ;  alive  with  a  promise  and  a  potency  that 
well-nigh  urge  me  to  fatidical  utterance,  so  sane 
is  it,  so  noble  in  contrast,  so  richly  fruitful  in 
treatment.  A  sympathetic  writer  he  is,  and  also 
a  man  who  deals  largely  in  the  humanities  of  his 
art.  Learned  beyond  the  dreams  of  Wagner, 
Brahms  buried  his  counterpoint  in  roses,  set  it 
to  blooming  in  the  Old-World  gardens  of  Ger- 
many ;  decked  his  science  with  the  sweet,  mad 
tunes  of  Hungary,  withal  remaining  a  Teuton, 
and  one  in  the  direct  line  of  Bach,  Beethoven, 
and  Schubert. 

3" 


OVERTONES 

And  yet  Brahms  dreams  of  pure  white  stair- 
cases that  scale  the  infinite.  A  dazzling,  dry 
light  floods  his  mind  at  times,  and  you  hear  the 
rustling  of  wings,  —  wings  of  great,  terrifying 
monsters,  hippogriffs  of  horrid  mien ;  hiero- 
glyphic faces,  faces  with  stony  stare,  menace 
your  imagination.  He  can  bring  down  within 
the  compass  of  the  octave  moods  that  are  out- 
side the  pale  of  mortals.  He  is  a  magician, 
often  spectral ;  yet  his  songs  have  the  homely 
lyric  fervor  and  concision  of  Robert  Burns.  A 
groper  after  the  untoward,  I  have  been  amazed 
at  certain  bars  in  his  F  sharp  minor  sonata,  and 
was  stirred  by  the  moonlight  tranquillity  in  the 
slow  movement  of  the  F  minor  sonata.  He  is 
often  dull,  muddy-pated,  obscure,  and  madden- 
ingly slow.  Then  lovely  music  wells  out  of  the 
mist ;  you  are  enchanted,  and  cry,  "  Brahms, 
master,  anoint  again  with  thy  precious  chrism 
our  thirsty  eyelids  !  " 

Brahms  is  an  inexorable  form  maker.  His 
four  symphonies,  his  three  piano  sonatas,  the 
choral  works  and  chamber  music  —  are  they  not 
all  living  testimony  to  his  admirable  manage- 
ment of  masses  ?  He  is  not  a  great  colorist. 
For  him  the  pigments  of  Makart,  Wagner,  and 
Theophile  Gautier  are  unsought.  Like  Puvis  de 
Chavannes,  he  is  a  Primitive.  Simple,  flat  tints, 
primary  and  cool,  are  superimposed  upon  an 
enormous  rhythmic  versatility  and  a  strenuous- 
ness  of  ideation.  Ideas  —  noble,  prof undity- 
312 


AFTER    WAGNER  — WHAT? 

embracing  ideas  —  he  has.  They  are  not  in  the 
smart,  epigrammatic,  flashing  style  of  your  little 
man.  He  disdains  racial  allusions.  He  is  a 
planetary  Teuton.  You  seek  in  vain  for  the 
geographical  hints  that  chain  Grieg  to  the  map 
of  Norway.  Brahms's  melodies  are  world  typi- 
cal, not  cabined  and  confined  to  his  native  soil. 
This  largeness  of  utterance,  lack  of  polish,  and 
a  disregard  for  the  politeness  of  his  art  do  not 
endear  him  to  the  unthinking.  Yet,  what  a 
master  miniaturist  he  is  in  his  little  piano  pieces, 
his  intermezzi  !  There  he  catches  the  tender 
sigh  of  childhood,  or  the  faint  intimate  flutter- 
ings  of  the  heart  stirred  by  desire.  Feminine 
he  is  as  is  no  woman ;  virile,  as  few  men.  The 
sinister  fury,  the  mocking,  drastic  fury  of  his 
first  rhapsodies,  —  true  Brahmsodies,  —  how  they 
pierce  to  the  core  the  pessimism  of  our  age ! 

He  reminds  me  more  of  Browning  than 
does  Schumann.  The  full-pulsed  humanity,  the 
dramatic  — ■  yes,  Brahms  is  sometimes  dramatic, 
not  theatric  —  modes  of  analysis,  the  relentless 
tracking  to  their  ultimate  lair  of  motives,  are 
Browning's ;  but  the  composer  never  loses  his 
grip  on  the  actualities  of  structure.  A  great 
sea  is  his  music,  and  it  sings  about  the  base  of 
that  mighty  mount  we  call  Beethoven.  Brahms 
takes  us  to  subterrene  depths  ;  Beethoven  is  for 
the  heights.  Strong  lungs  are  needed  in  the 
company  of  these  giants. 

Now  comes  another  enigmatic  tangent  of 
313 


OVERTONES 

music,  the  heavenly  maid.  The  seed  planted 
by  Berlioz  and  carefully  husbanded  by  Liszt 
has  come  to  a  pretty  and  a  considerable  har- 
vest. Of  Liszt,  whose  revolutionary  music  the 
world  has  not  yet  recognized,  this  is  not  the 
time  to  write.  Only  volumes  can  do  justice 
to  his  rare  genius  as  a  man,  artist,  and  com- 
poser. I  spoke  of  the  death  of  Chopin  and 
Schumann  stifling  the  aspirations  of  the  roman- 
tics ;  nothing  ever  dies,  and  by  an  elliptical 
route  there  has  returned  to  us  something  of  the 
fire  and  fury-signifying  passion  of  these  same 
romantics.  All  this  we  find  in  the  music  of 
Peter  Tschai'kowsky,  all  this  and  more.  Tscha'f- 
kovvsky,  artistically,  is  another  descendant  of 
Liszt  and  Berlioz,  with  a  superadded  Slavic  color 
—  or,  shall  I  say  flavor  ?  Tschai'kowsky  deliber- 
ately, though  without  malice,  abandoned  the  old 
symphonic  form.  Ravished  by  what  Henry 
James  calls  the  "scenic  idea,"  though  without 
compelling  talent  for  the  theatre,  he  poured  into 
the  elastic  and  anonymous  mould  of  the  sym- 
phonic poem  passion  and  poetry.  A  poetic 
dramatist,  he  selected  as  typical  motives  Ham- 
let, Francesca  da  Rimini,  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
Don  Juan,  Jeanne  d'Arc,  and  Manfred ;  his  six 
symphonies  are  romantic  suites,  resplendent 
with  the  pomp  and  color  of  an  imagination 
saturated  in  romanticism.  His  fierce  Cossack 
temperament  and  mingling  of  realistic,  sensu- 
ous savagery  and  Malo-Russian  mysticism  set 
314 


AFTER    WAGNER  — WHAT? 

him  apart  among  composers.  As  musical  as 
Wagner  or  Brahms,  he  lacks  the  great  central, 
intellectual  grip  of  these  two  masters.  He 
never  tested  his  genius  with  fundamental  brain- 
work.  But  if  we  wish  a  picture  of  musical  psy- 
chological life  of  the  latter  half  of  this  century, 
it  is  to  Tschai'kowsky  that  we  must  go. 

Rubinstein  I  do  not  consider  a  factor  in  the 
musical  strife.  He  was  an  ardent  upholder  of 
both  camps,  and,  being  a  German-Russian  and 
a  Russian-German  Jew  and  Lutheran,  his  eclec- 
ticism proved  his  undoing.  Something  of  the 
same  sort  may  be  said  of  Saint-Saens,  the  clever 
Frenchman.  Grieg  built  his  nest  overlooking 
Norwegian  fjords,  and  built  it  of  bright  colored 
bits  of  Schumann  and  Chopin.  He  is  the  bird 
with  the  one  sweet,  albeit  monotonous  note.  He 
does  not  count  seriously.  Neither  does  Dvorak, 
of  Bohemia,  who,  despite  his  intimate  mastery  of 
orchestral  color,  has  never  said  anything  particu- 
larly novel  or  profound.  Smetana  is  his  superior 
at  every  point.  Eugen  d' Albert  treads  with  care 
the  larger  footprints  of  Brahms  ;  and  Goldmark, 
a  very  Makart  in  his  prodigal  amazements  of 
color,  has  contributed  a  few  canvases  to  the 
gallery.  But  Germany  and  Austria,  with  one 
exception,  are  dead.  I  do  not  count  Bruckner ; 
he  patterned  after  Wagner  too  closely.  Italy, 
with  the  exception  of  Boi'to,  is  as  bare  of  big 
young  talent  as  Mother  Hubbard's  cupboard. 
France  has  Massenet,  Bruneau,  Saint-Saens, 
31 5 


OVERTONES 

Cesar  Franck,  Vincent  dTndy,  Faure\  Charpen- 
tier,  Lalo  — ! 

We  have  heard  little  except  a  string  quartet 
of  Claude  Debussy's  in  New  York.  The  music 
to  Maeterlinck's  Pelleas  and  Melisande  is  so 
absolutely  wedded  to  the  play,  so  incidental  in 
the  true  sense  of  a  much-abused  word,  that  as 
absolute  music  it  is  unthinkable.  Hearing  it 
you  set  the  composer  down  as  lacking  ear.  But 
Richard  Strauss  via  the  music  of  Wagner,  Liszt, 
and  Berlioz  has  set  the  pace  for  the  cacopho- 
nists.  Debussy,  notwithstanding  his  unquestion- 
able musicianship,  is  obviously  a  "  literary " 
composer.  That  is  to  say,  his  brain  must  first 
be  excited  by  the  contemplation  of  a  dramatic 
situation,  a  beautiful  bouquet  of  verse,  a  picture, 
a  stirring  episode  in  a  novel.  But  why  cavil 
whether  the  initial  impulse  for  his  music  be  the 
need  of  money  or  Da  Vinci's  Mona  Lisa !  A 
composer  who  can  set  Mallarme's  difficult 
L'Apres  Midi,  and  the  more  recondite  poems 
of  Baudelaire,  need  not  be  daunted  by  criticism 
as  to  his  methods  of  work.  Take  this  Pel- 
leas  music  for  example ;  it  is  a  perfect  speci- 
men of  decomposition.  The  musical  phrase  is 
dislocated ;  the  rhythms  are  decomposed,  the 
harmonic  structure  is  pulled  to  pieces,  melts 
before  our  eyes  —  or  ears  ;  is  resolved  into  its 
constituent  parts.  And  his  themes  are  often 
developed  in  opposition  to  all  laws  of  musical 
syntax.  In  Debussy's  peculiar  idiom  there 
316 


AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 

seems  to  be  no  normal  sequence  —  I  say  seems, 
for  it  is  simply  because  our  ears  are  not  accus- 
tomed to  the  novel  progressions  and  apparent 
forced  conjunctions  of  harmonies  and  thematic 
fragments.  Tonalities  are  vague,  even  violently 
unnatural.  The  introduction  to  the  forest  scene, 
where  Golaud  discovers  Melisande  is  of  a  sin- 
gular sweetness.  The  composer  has  caught, 
without  anxious  preoccupation,  the  exact  note 
of  Maeterlinck,  and  he  never  misses  the  note 
throughout  the  opera.  As  it  is  impossible  to 
divorce  music  and  text,  —  Debussy  seems  to  be 
Maeterlinck's  musical  other  self,  —  so  it  is  a 
useless  task  to  point  out  the  beauties,  the  ugli- 
ness, the  characteristic  qualities  of  the  score. 
In  the  piano  partition  nothing  may  be  gleaned 
of  its  poetic  fervor,  its  bold  landscape  painting, 
its  psychologic  penetration.  There  are  some 
isolated  spots  where  the  orchestra  soliloquizes, 
though  few.  It  is  the  complete  enveloping  of 
Maeterlinck's  strangely  beautiful  play  with  a 
musical  atmosphere  that  wins  the  attention.  It 
is  easy  to  conceive  of  the  play  apart  from  the 
music,  but  not  of  the  music  as  a  separate  entity. 
Debussy,  then,  has  a  musical  idiom  of  his  own. 
He  is  a  stylist  and  an  impressionist.  There 
are  purples  on  his  palette  —  no  blacks.  If  the 
Western  world  ever  adopted  Eastern  tonalities, 
Claude  Debussy  would  be  the  one  composer 
who  would  manage  its  system,  with  its  quarter- 
tones   and    split    quarters.      The    man  seems  a 


OVERTONES 

wraith  from  the  East;  his  music  was  heard  long 
ago  in  the  hill  temples  of  Borneo,  was  made  as 
a  symphony  to  welcome  the  head-hunters  with 
their  ghastly  spoils  of  war !  Debussy's  future 
should  be  viewed  with  suspicion  from  all  the 
critical  watch-towers. 

In  Belgium  there  are  major  talents  such  as 
Peter  Benoit,  Gilson,  Edgar  Tinel,  Jan  Blockx, 
Lekeu,  Van  der  Stucken  —  the  last  named  was 
one  of  the  first  among  the  young  Belgians  to 
compose  tone-poems. 

Charles  Martin  Loeffler  is  an  Alsatian  with 
French  blood  in  his  artistic  veins.  He  belongs 
by  affinity  to  the  Belgian  group.  His  symphonic 
poem  is  called  The  Death  of  Tintagiles  after  the 
mysterious  and  horrible  drama  of  Maurice  Maet- 
erlinck— whose  plays,  despite  their  exquisite  lit- 
erary quality,  act  better  than  they  read.  Mr. 
Loeffler's  poem  was  first  produced  in  Boston 
under  Emil  Paur's  direction,  January  8,  1898. 
Then  there  were  two  violas  d'amore  employed 
in  the  obligato,  perhaps  symbolizing  the  sobbing 
voices  of  Tintagiles  and  Ygraine.  Since  that  per- 
formance —  when  Messrs.  Kneisel  and  Loeffler 
played  the  violas  —  the  composer  has  dispensed 
with  one  of  these  quaint  instruments,  has  remod- 
elled the  score  and  has  also  re-orchestrated  it. 

Thoroughly  subjective  as  must  ever  be  the 
highest  type  of  the  symphonic  poem,  The  Death 
of  Tintagiles  is  rather  a  series  of  shifting  mood- 
pictures  than  an  attempt  to  portray  the  drama 
318 


AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 

too  objectively.  One  feels  the  horrid  suspense 
of  the  storm  —  it  is  a  sinister  night !  —  and  what 
went  on  behind  closed  doors  in  that  gloomy- 
castle  not  far  from  the  sonorous  breakers  on  the 
beach.  There  is  soul  strife,  but  it  is  muted. 
Life  here  is  a  tragedy  too  deep  for  blood  or 
tears,  and  the  silence  —  the  Loeffler  orchestra 
can  suggest  hideous  and  profound  silence  when 
playing  fortissimo — has  the  true  Maeterlinckian 
quality. 

And  then  Ygraine's  agony,  as  she  searches 
for  her  murdered  brother,  Tintagiles, —  "  I  have 
come  up,  come  up  high,  countless  steps  between 
high,  pitiless  walls,"  —  can  be  poignantly  felt. 
Those  four  harsh  knocks,  like  the  knocking  at 
the  gate  in  Macbeth,  must  surely  indicate  the 
tragedy  embouched  in  hidden  spaces. 

The  music,  considered  as  music,  is  very 
beautiful.  It  easily  ranks  its  composer  among 
the  stronger  of  the  modern  men.  Loeffler  is 
primarily  a  painter,  and  then  a  poet.  He  seldom 
sounds  the  big  heroic  note ;  he  is  too  subtle, 
and  a  despiser  of  the  easily  compassed.  His 
orchestral  prose  is  rather  the  prose  of  Walter 
Pater  than  the  prose  of — say,  Macaulay  or  Mey- 
erbeer. Despising  the  cheap  and  grandiose,  he 
has  formulated  a  style  that  is  sometimes  "  pre- 
cious "  in  its  intensity  and  avoidance  of  the 
phrase  banal.  A  colorist,  his  tints  begin  where 
other  men's  leave  off ;  and  his  palette  is  richer 
than  the  rainbow's.  In  general  "  tone "  he 
319 


OVERTONES 

hovers  between  the  modern  Russians  and  Rich- 
ard Strauss. 

In  theme  he  is  Loeffler.  The  Death  of  Tin- 
tagiles  has  enclosed  within  it  much  lacerating 
emotion,  many  new  color  perspectives,  many 
harmonic  devices,  and  withal  a  human,  though 
somewhat  sublimated  human,  quality  which  en- 
dears the  music  at  the  first  hearing. 

Despite  its  psychology,  it  is  always  music 
for  music's  sake.  There  is  formal  structure  — 
Loeffler's  form  —  and  a  distinct  climax.  The 
sparing  use  of  the  exotic-toned  viola  d'amore  is 
most  telling.  The  fanfares,  recalling  the  dim 
triumphs  of  the  dusty  dead,  are  superbly  effec- 
tive ;  and  the  cantilena  is  ever  touching.  It  is 
all  poetic,  "atmospheric"  music,  yet  it  is  none 
the  less  moving  and  dramatic. 

Here  then  is  the  present  situation  :  Wagner 
preaching  in  his  music  dreams ;  Tschaikowsky 
passionately  declaiming  the  cumulative  woes  of 
mankind  in  accents  most  pathetically  dramatic  ; 
Brahms  leisurely  breasting  the  turbid  billows 
of  this  maelstrom  and  speaking  in  golden  tones 
the  doctrine  of  art  for  art's  sake ;  and,  finally, 
Richard  Strauss,  a  Ubermensch  himself,  seeking 
with  furious  and  rhythmic  gestures  to  divert 
from  the  theatre  the  art  he  loves  —  who  shall 
say  whither  all  this  will  lead  ?  After  Wagner  — 
music  for  music's  own  symphonic  sake,  and  not 
for  impossible  librettos,  acting-singers,  and  scene- 
painters. 

320 


AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 

II 
WAGNER    AND    THE   FRENCH 

Stendhal— Henry  Beyle  —  once  wrote:  — 
"  Romanticism  is  the  art  of  presenting  to  peo- 
ple the  literary  works  which  in  the  actual  state 
of  their  habits  and  beliefs  are  capable  of  giving 
them  the  greatest  possible  pleasure ;  classicism, 
on  the  contrary,  is  the  art  of  presenting  them 
with  that  which  gave  the  greatest  possible  pleas- 
ure to  their  grandfathers." 

That  the  reaction  from  a  brutal  realism,  a 
minute  photography  of  nasty  details,  would  come 
in  Parisian  art  was  a  foregone  conclusion  to  any 
acute  observer  of  the  history  of  literature,  art, 
and  music  since  Goethe's  imperial  mind  set  the 
fashion  of  things  in  the  early  years  of  the  last 
century.  The  splendor  of  Theophile  Gautier's 
famous  "gilet  rouge,"  — he  declared  that  it  was 
a  pink  doublet,  —  which  graced  the  memorable 
days  of  the  first  violent  representations  of  Er- 
nani,  was  naught  but  a  scarlet  protest  against 
the  frozen  classicism  of  Cherubini  the  composer, 
the  painters  Ingres  and  David,  and  the  worship 
of  writers  like  Boileau,  Racine,  and  Malherbe. 
A  wild  rush  toward  romanticism  was  inevitable 
after  the  colorless  elegiacs  of  Lamartine.  And 
the  grand  old  man  at  Weimar,  in  the  twilight  of 
his  glorious  career,  summed  up  the  whole  move- 
ment of  1830  by  saying:  —  "They  all  come 
from  Chateaubriand." 

Y  321 


OVERTONES 

But  Victor  Hugo,  Theophile  Gautier,  Dela- 
croix, Chopin,  Alfred  de  Musset,  George  Sand, 
Franz  Liszt,  Heinrich  Heine,  and  later,  Charles 
Baudelaire,  in  fact  all  that  brilliant  coterie  which 
was  the  nucleus  of  the  artistic  rebellion,  strove 
at  first  independently,  with  little  knowledge  of 
the  others'  doings.  They  possibly  came  from 
Chateaubriand,  whose  Genius  of  Christianity 
was  but  a  return  to  Middle  Age  ideals :  but 
Walter  Scott,  with  his  great  romantic  historical 
novels,  and  Lord  Byron,  with  his  glowing,  pas- 
sionate verse,  were  the  true  progenitors  of  the 
reaction  against  stiff  scholasticism ;  and  their  in- 
fluence even  stirred  phlegmatic  Germany,  with 
its  Gallic  lacquer,  to  new  and  bolder  utterances. 
Heinrich  Heine,  an  exile  who  spoke  of  himself 
as  a  "  German  swallow  who  had  built  a  nest  in 
the  periwig  of  M.  Voltaire,"  threw  himself  into 
the  fray  with  pen  dipped  in  sparkling  vitriol  and 
did  doughty  deeds  for  the  cause. 

Frederic  Chopin,  despite  the  limited  field  of  a 
piano  keyboard,  was  the  unconscious  centre  of 
all  the  hazy,  purple  dreams,  drifting  ideals,  and 
perfumed  sprays  of  thought  that  to-day  we  call 
romanticism.  As  the  hub  of  that  vast  wheel  of 
poesy  and  gorgeous  imaginings,  he  absorbed  the 
spirit  of  the  time  and  shot  out  radiant  spokes, 
which  lived  after  the  whole  romantic  school  be- 
came a  faded  flower,  a  pallid  ghost  of  the  yester- 
year. Hugo  flamed  across  the  historical  canvas 
like  a  painted  scarlet  meteor ;  Berlioz's  mad  tal- 
322 


AFTER    WAGNER  — WHAT? 

ent,  expressed  by  his  symbolical  coloring  in  or- 
chestration —  color  carried  to  insanity  pitch  — 
was  a  lesser  musical  Hugo.  Delacroix,  with  his 
brush  dipped  in  the  burning  sun,  painted  verti- 
goes of  color  and  audacities  of  conception.  All 
was  turbulent  exaggeration,  all  was  keyed  above 
the  normal  pitch  of  life,  and  in  the  midst  the 
still,  small  voice  of  Chopin  could  be  heard. 

The  end  had  come  to  all  monstrous  growths 
of  the  romantic  epoch  in  French  art  —  be  it  re- 
membered that  earlier  the  movement  was  equally 
as  strong  in  Germany,  beginning  with  Novalis, 
Schlegel,  Tieck,  Schubert,  Schumann,  and  Jean 
Paul  Richter;  the  revolution  of  1848  shattered 
the  dream  of  the  mad  republicans  of  art.  That 
sphinx-like  nonentity,  the  third  Napoleon, 
mounted  the  imperial  tribune,  and  the  Cerberus 
of  Realism  barked  its  first  hoarse  bark.  For  a 
time  this  phantasmagoria  dominated  Parisian  art 
and  letters. 

All  this  was  typical  of  cynicism,  unbelief ; 
technical  perfection  was  carried  to  heights  un- 
dreamed of,  and  the  outcome  of  it  all  was  Emile 
Zola.  French  painting  was  realized  in  the  min- 
iature manner  of  Meissonier,  or  later  in  the 
marvellous  brutalities  of  Degas.  Two  geniuses 
who  attempted  to  stem  the  tide  that  ran  so 
swiftly  died  untimely  deaths  :  Georges  Bizet,  the 
creator  of  Carmen,  and  Henri  Regnault,  who 
painted  the  Moorish  Execution  in  the  Luxem- 
bourg.    The  last-named  perished  before  Bougi- 

323 


OVERTONES 

val  in  1871,  done  to  death  by  a  spent  Prussian 
bullet.  These  two  remarkable  men,  with  pos- 
sibly the  addition  of  Fortuny,  the  Spanish 
virtuoso  of  arabesques  in  color,  might  have 
changed  history  if  they  had  lived.  But  the 
fates  willed  it  otherwise,  and  realism  became 
the  shibboleth. 

Even  that  ardent  young  group,  the  Parnas- 
sians, as  they  called  themselves,  were  beguiled 
into  this  quagmire  of  folly  and  half-truths.  La 
Terre  marked  the  lowest  depths  of  the  bog,  and 
again  a  reaction  began.  Leconte  de  Lisle, 
Sully-Prudhomme,  the  graceful  Banville  (a  be- 
lated romanticist),  Coppee,  Puvis  de  Chavannes ; 
the  impressionists,  Monet,  Manet,  Rodin,  the 
sculptor  ;  the  poets,  Rene  Ghil,  Catulle  Mendes, 
Verlaine,  ill-fated  Albert  Glatigny,  Anatole 
France,  unhappy  de  Maupassant,  and  our  own 
countrymen,  Stuart  Merrill  and  Viele-Griffin 
began  steering  for  other  waters.  Symbolism, 
Buddhism,  every  ism  imaginable,  have  been 
at  the  rudder  since  then.  Synthetic  subtlety 
in  art  was  the  watchword  of  the  party  of  new 
ideas,  and  a  renaissance  of  the  arts  seemed 
to  be  at  hand.  For  this  movement,  which  agi- 
tated artistic  Paris,  the  younger  and  fierier 
spirits,  musicians,  painters,  actors,  poets,  and 
sculptors,  banded,  and,  emulative  of  Richard 
Wagner's  Bayreuthian  ideal,  began  the  fabrica- 
tion of  a  new  art,  or  rather  the  synthesis  of  all 
arts,  which  seemed  the  wildest  and  most  extrav- 
324 


AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 

agant  dream  ever  conceived  by  a  half-dozen 
frenzied  brains. 

The  history  of  art  moves  in  cycles,  and  each 
cycle  carries  with  it  a  residuum  of  the  last. 
Richard  Wagner  attempted  on  a  gigantic  scale  a 
synthesis  of  the  arts.  He  wished  to  condense, 
concentrate,  epitomize  in  his  music-drama  the 
arts  of  mimicry  or  pantomime,  elocution,  singing, 
painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  drama,  and  in- 
strumental music.  He  literally  levied  tribute 
on  two  of  the  senses  and  welded  them  into  an 
ensemble,  in  which  every  shade  of  emotion,  par- 
ticularly the  heroic  and  the  tender,  was  depicted. 
But  Wagner's  genius  is,  after  all,  Teutonic  in 
its  diffusiveness.  He  could  not  escape  his 
national  environment. 

"  Fifteen  years  ago,"  said  Paul  Bourget, 
"  poetry's  ambition  was  in  picturesqueness  and 
execution  to  rival  painting.  To-day  it  models 
itself  on  music.  It  is  preoccupied  with  effects 
of  mystery,  of  shadow,  of  the  intangible.  This 
is  strikingly  illustrated  in  the  verse  of  Verlaine, 
whose  poetic  creed  I  have  given  you  before  in 
the  '  O  la  nuance,  seule  fiance,  Le  reve  au  reve 
et  la  flute  au  cor.' "  These  new  men  are  musi- 
cians in  words.  They  follow  Wagner ;  above 
all  are  they  descendants  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe, 
who  has  literally  deflected  the  mighty  wave  of 
French  literature  into  his  neglected  channel. 
Ah,  if  we  but  appreciated  Poe  as  do  our  Gallic 
brethren  !  Mallarme  and  Gustav  Kahn  produce 
325 


OVERTONES 

verbal  effects  akin  to  music,  with  its  melancholy 
mystery. 

It  is  Richard  Wagner  who  has  done  much  of 
all  this,  preceded  by  Poe.  Symbolism,  a  soft 
green  star,  is  but  a  pin-prick  in  the  inverted 
bowl  of  the  night,  but  it  sings  like  flame  in  thin 
glass.  Its  song  is  as  beautiful  as  the  twilights  of 
Chopin's  garden,  or  as  the  wavings  of  the  trees 
in  Wagner's  luminous  forest.  Slowly  but  resist- 
lessly,  and  despite  himself,  —  for  Wagner  never 
bridled  his  tongue  where  the  French  were  con- 
cerned, —  this  positive  force  conquered  France, 
and  penetrated,  not  alone  the  musical  world,  but 
to  the  world  of  letters,  of  moral  ideas.  It  is  noth- 
ing short  of  a  miracle.  The  revolt  all  along  the 
line,  as  manifested  by  the  impressionists  in 
painting,  who  preferred  to  use  their  eyes  and 
see  an  infinity  of  tintings  in  nature,  undreamed 
of  by  the  painters  of  a  generation  ago  ;  the  poets 
and  litterateurs  who  formed  the  new  group 
called  The  Companions  of  the  New  Life,  whose 
aspirations  are  for  the  ideal  of  morality,  justice ; 
sculptors  like  Marc  Antokolsky  and  Auguste 
Rodin,  who  sought  to  hew  great  ideas  from  the 
rude  rock,  instead  of  carving  lascivious  pretti- 
ness,  —  all  these  new  spirits,  I  say,  but  fell  in 
with  the  vast  revolution  instituted  by  Richard 
Wagner.  In  the  region  of  moral  ideas  Melchior 
de  Vogue,  Ernest  Lavisse,  and  Paul  Desjardins 
are  combating  the  artistic  indifferentism  and 
black  despair  of  the  school  of  materialists,  real- 
326 


AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 

ists,  and  the  rest.  A  new  idea  in  France  ger- 
minates as  in  no  other  country  on  the  globe, 
because  it  finds  congenial  soil  somewhere.  From 
an  idea  to  a  school  is  but  a  short  step,  hence 
the  rapidity  of  the  Wagner  worship  after  it  once 
took  root. 

Ill 

ISOLDE   AND   TRISTAN 

You  notice  the  inversion !  Wagner's  music- 
drama  primarily  concerns  the  woman  ;  she  is  the 
protagonist,  not  Tristan.  Even  in  Act  III, 
where  this  lover  of  lovers  lies  awaiting  Isolde 
and  death,  it  is  her  psychology  which  most  con- 
cerns the  composer.  So  I  call  it  Isolde  and 
Tristan  —  the  subjugation  of  man  by  woman. 

It  was  Wagner  himself  who  confessed  that 
he  had  thrown  overboard  his  theories  while 
penning  this  marvellous  score.  In  it  the  music 
stifles  the  action.  It  is  the  very  flowering  of  the 
Wagnerian  genius  ;  his  best  self,  his  fantasy,  his 
wonderful  power  of  making  music  articulate,  are 
there.  And  from  the  tiny  acorn  in  the  prelude 
grows  the  mighty  oak  of  the  symphonic  drama. 

There  is  something  primal,  something  of  the 
rankness  of  nature,  of  life's  odor  and  hum,  and 
life's  fierce  passions  in  this  music  —  music  before 
which  all  other  pictures  of  love  made  by  poet, 
painter,  and  composer  pale.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  complex  scores  in  existence  ;  yet  it  is  built 
32/ 


OVERTONES 

upon  but  one  musical  motive.  Because  of  its 
epical  quality  Tristan  and  Isolde  may  be  com- 
pared to  the  works  of  the  Greek  dramatists,  to 
the  Divine  Comedy,  to  Hamlet,  and  to  Faust. 

Its  weltering  symphonic  mass  is  as  the  surge 
and  thunder  of  tropical  seas.  It  seems  almost 
incomprehensible  for  a  single  human  brain  to 
have  conceived  and  carried  to  fruition  such  a 
magnificent  composition.  In  it  are  the  pains, 
pleasures,  and  consoling  philosophies  of  life. 
Hamlet  and  Faust  are  its  spiritual  brethren. 
The  doubting,  brooding  spirit  of  these  two 
dreamers  are  united  to  the  pessimistic,  knightly 
nature  of  Tristan.  He  is  human,  all  too  human  ; 
as  Nietzsche  phrased  it  —  but  he  is  also  the 
human  glorified. 

He  has  grafted  upon  his  mediaeval  soul  the 
modern  spirit,  which  we  are  pleased  to  believe 
Schopenhauer  typified  in  his  profoundly  pessi- 
mistic philosophy.  But  this  spirit  is  as  old  as 
Himalaya's  hills.  Saka-Munyi  sang  of  the  pains 
of  love  centuries  ago  ;  and  the  bliss-stricken  pair, 
Tristan  and  Isolde,  dive  down  to  death,  groping 
as  they  sink,  for  the  problems  of  life,  love,  and 
mortality.  Death  and  Love  is  the  eternal  dual- 
ism chanted  by  Wagner  in  this  drama.  And  has 
the  theme  ever  been  chanted  so  enthrallingly  ? 

No  one  of  Wagner's  works  enchains  the  im- 
agination as  does  this  glowing  picture  of  love 
and  despair.  From  the  first  beautiful  prelude 
to  Isolde's  exquisite  death-song — one  of  those 
328 


AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 

songs  the  world  will  not  willingly  let  perish  — ■ 
we  are  as  in  a  hypnotic  trance.  The  action  is 
psychologic  rather  than  theatric.  We  are  per- 
mitted to  view  two  burning  souls ;  we  analyze, 
rejoice  and  suffer  in  their  psychical  adven- 
tures. This  is  not  the  drama  of  romantic  woo- 
ing and  the  clash  of  swords ;  all  conventions  of 
music  and  drama  are  set  aside,  are  denied. 
There  is  a  love  philter,  but  it  is  not  the  philter 
which  arouses  the  fatal  love  ;  the  love  is  implicit 
in  the  lovers  before  the  curtain  lifts. 

We  are  given  a  night  scene  of  magical  beauty 
—  yet  how  different  from  the  usual  banal  operatic 
assignation.  In  an  old-time,  Old- World  forest  a 
man  and  a  woman  have  revealed  their  souls ; 
sobbing  in  the  distance  is  the  soft  horn  music  of 
the  kingly  hunt.  Now  it  is  love  against  the 
world,  the  relentless  instinct  that  mocks  at 
conventional  gyves.  Was  ever  such  an  enchant- 
ing romance  sung  ?  The  very  moonlight  seems 
melodious.  After  the  storm  and  stress  of  the 
first  act  this  scene  recalls  Heine's  This  is  the 
Fairy  Wood  of  Old.  Wagner's  philosophy 
should  concern  us  but  little ;  his  music  is  his 
metaphysic ;  its  beauty  and  dramatic  signifi- 
cance are  worth  tomes  of  his  theories.  There 
is  the  superb  web  and  woof  of  this  tonal  tapestry, 
the  most  eloquent  orchestra  that  ever  stormed 
or  sighed ;  there  is  every  accent  and  nuance  of 
human  speech,  faithfully  reproduced  ;  and  above 
all  there  hovers  the  imagination  of  the  poet- 
329 


OVERTONES 

composer.  These  thematic  nuggets,  these  mo- 
tives of  love  and  death,  which  paint  the  lives  of 
his  men  and  women  —  are  they  not  wonderfully 
conceived,  wonderfully  developed  ?  Berlioz  it 
was  who  confessed  that  the  prelude  to  this  music- 
drama  proved  ever  an  enigma  to  him.  Wagner's 
melodic  curves  of  intensity  mirror  the  soul's  per- 
turbations. He  is  poet  of  passion,  a  master  of 
thrilling  tones,  a  magician  who  everywhere  finds 
willing  thralls. 

And  the  music  —  how  it  searches  the  nerves. 
How  it  throws  into  the  background,  because  of 
its  intensity,  all  the  love  lays  ever  penned  by 
mortal  composer  !  How  it  appeals  to  the  intel- 
lect with  its  exalted  realism !  This  music  is 
not  for  those  who  admire  the  pink  prettiness  of 
Gounod's  Romeo  and  Juliet.  It  is  music  that 
would  have  been  loved  by  that  "fierce  and 
splendid  old  man,"  Walter  Savage  Landor,  by 
Shelley,  by  Byron  and  Walt  Whitman  —  the 
latter  once  confessed  to  me  his  love  for  Wagner ; 
"it  makes  my  old  bones  sweeter,"  he  said — but 
it  would  not  have  been  admired  by  Wordsworth 
or  Tennyson.  Swinburne  adores  Wagner  almost 
as  much  as  he  adores  the  sea,  and  he  sings  the 
praise  of  both  with  an  absence  of  reserve  that 
recalls  the  mot  of  Vauvenargues :  "  To  praise 
moderately  is  always  a  sign  of  mediocrity." 

Yet  in  Tristan  and  Isolde  are  the  seeds  of  the 
morbid,  the  hysterical,  and  the  sublimely  erotic 
—  hall  marks  of  most  great  modern  works  of 
330 


AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 

art.  And  there  is,  too,  the  Katliarsis  of  Aris- 
totle, the  purification  by  pity  and  terror.  This 
dominating  tragic  principle  places  the  drama 
within  the  category  of  the  classic. 

Ernest  Newman,  in  his  Study  of  Wagner,  an 
epoch-making  work  in  musical  criticism,  puts 
the  question  in  its  exact  bearings.  Wagner  is 
a  great  musical-dra.ma.tist  —  his  dramas  alone 
could  not  stand  on  their  legs,  so  otiose  are  they. 
His  poetry,  qua  poetry,  is  second-rate ;  but  as 
"  words  for  music,"  words  that  fly  well  in  the 
wind  of  his  inspiration,  they  are  unique.  This 
composer  was  harassed  all  his  life  long  by  the 
word  "drama."  He  believed  that  a  perfect 
union  of  music  and  drama  could  be  effected  — 
vain  dream  —  and  wasted  much  valuable  time 
and  good  white  paper  trying  to  prove  his  thesis. 
To  the  end  his  musical  ruled  his  dramatic  in- 
stincts ;  he  was  always  the  composer.  Tristan 
and  Isolde  is  the  most  signal  instance  of  this. 
Its  Greek-like  severity  of  form  in  the  book,  its 
paucity  of  incident,  were  so  many  barriers  re- 
moved for  the  poet-composer  who,  hampered  by 
the  awful  weight  of  material  in  the  Ring,  had 
to  write  ineffectual  music  at  times. 

Newman  thinks  that  the  last  scene  of  Act  II 
of  Isolde  and  Tristan  is  an  anti-climax.  From 
a  theatric  viewpoint,  yes ;  but  not  so  if  Wag- 
ner the  composer  be  considered.  If  he  had 
dropped  the  curtain  on  the  infatuated  pair  —  as 
he  does  in  Act  I  of  Die  Walkure  —  a  whole 
331 


OVERTONES 

skein  of  the  moving  story  would  have  been 
missing.  The  action  is  pulled  up  with  a  jerk  by 
Melot's  entrance ;  yet  what  follows  is  worth  a 
volume  of  plays  with  the  conventional  thrilling 
"curtain."  Think  of  the  drama  without  Marke's 
speech,  without  that  compassion  and  love  which 
Isolde  and  Tristan  exhibit,  oblivious  to  all  about 
them !  Besides,  the  scene  needs  a  quieter, 
withal  more  tragic,  note  than  the  endings  of 
Acts  I  and  III.  Suppose  that  the  King,  Tris- 
tan's uncle,  had  been  like  that  other  monarch 
sung  of  by  Heinrich  Heine:  — 

Oh,  there's  a  king,  a  grim  old  king,  with  beard  both  long 

and  gray. 
The  king  is  old.     The  queen  is  young.     Her  face  is  fresh 

as  May. 
And  there's  a  lad,  a  laughing  lad,  so  blithe  and  debonair, 
The  queen  herself  has  chosen  him,  her  silken  train  to  bear. 
How  runs   the   tale,    that  good  grave  tale  the  peasant 

women  tell  ? 
"  So  both  of  them  were  put  to  death,  for  loving  over  well." 

There  has  been  so  much  discussion  over  the 
so-called  slow  tempi  of  Bayreuth  that  it  is  time 
to  shatter  the  little  legend  with  stern  facts.  A 
well-known  conductor  who  has  presided  at  Bay- 
reuth relates  that  when  an  old  man  Richard 
Wagner  would  occasionally  take  up  the  baton 
and  conduct  Parsifal  or  Tristan  at  a  rehearsal. 
His  admiration  for  his  own  music  —  an  admira- 
tion that  was  starved  during  his  exile  —  mani- 
fested itself  in  a  tendency  to  dragging  tempi. 
332 


AFTER   WAGNER  — WHAT? 

The  venerable  composer  retarded  each  bar  as  if 
to  squeeze  from  it  the  last  lingering  drop  of 
sweetness.  This  trait  was  noticed  and  copied 
by  the  younger  generation  of  conductors.  The 
elder  group,  Richter,  Levi,  and  Seidl  had  and 
have  the  true  tradition.  The  later  one  simply 
means  that  Wagner's  pulse  beat  was  older  and 
slower.  To  slavishly  imitate  this  is  but  a  sign 
of  the  humor-breeding  snobbery  now  so  rife  at 
Wahnfried.  The  music  itself  is  the  best  refuta- 
tion of  such  folly. 

.  Wagner  lets  Love  beckon  Death  to  its  side, 
and  together  Love  and  Death,  inseparable  com- 
panions from  time's  infancy,  close  the  drama, 
the  king  sadly  gazing  at  the  meeting  of  the 
great  clear  sky  and  sea,  while  Brangaene,  near 
by,  is  bruised  and  bent  with  immitigable  grief. 

What  a  picture,  what  a  tale,  what  music  ! 

"The  world  will  find  a  wholesome  reaction  in 
the  study  of  music  from  its  spiritual  side,  its 
inner  life.  In  the  laws  of  tonality  the  most  mu- 
sical and  the  least  musical  will  have  a  common 
ground  of  interest.  By  study  of  tone,  character, 
or  mental  effects,  we  are  led  to  realize  that  the 
marvellous  intuition  of  Pythagoras,  Plato,  and 
Aristotle  was  correct,  that  music  is  the  basis  of 
all  human  development."  This,  by  an  author 
unknown  to  me,  is  a  prophecy  of  the  track  that 
music  must  take  if  it  is  to  ascend.  Intellectual 
music,  music  that  does  not  appeal  merely  to  the 
feverish  nerves  of  this  generation,  is  what  we 
333 


OVERTONES 

need  ;  and  by  intellectual  music  I  do  not  mean 
too  complex  or  abstract  music,  abstract  in  the 
sense  of  lacking  human  interest.  Is  there  no 
mean  between  the  brawls  and  lusts  of  Mas- 
cagni's  peasant  folk  and  the  often  abstruse  delv- 
ing of  Brahms  ?  Surely  to  think  high  means  to 
hear  plainly  —  or  else  Wordsworth  is  mistaken. 
We  fret,  fumble,  and  analyze  too  much  in  our 
arts.  Why  cannot  we  have  the  Athenian  glad- 
ness and  simplicity  of  Mozart,  with  the  added 
richness  of  Richard  Strauss  ?  Must  knowledge 
ever  bring  with  it  pain  and  weariness  of  life  ? 
Is  there  no  fruit  in  this  Armida  garden  that  is 
without  ashes  ?  Why  cannot  we  accept  music 
without  striving  to  extort  from  it  metaphysical 
meanings  ?  There  is  Mozart's  G  minor  sym- 
phony—  in  its  sunny  measures  is  sanity.  To  per- 
dition with  preachers  and  pedagogues !  Open 
the  casements  of  your  soul ;  flood  it  with  music, 
and  sing  with  Shelley  :  — 

Music  when  soft  voices  die 
Vibrates  in  the  memory. 


334 


NOTE 

Several  of  the  foregoing  essays  have  appeared  in 
Scribner's  Magazine,  the  Musical  Courier,  Criterion, 
Harper's  Bazar,  Metropolitan,  New  York  Sun,  and 
elsewhere.  They  have  been  greatly  altered  and 
amplified  for  republication.  The  study  of  Parsifal, 
the  major  part  of  which  was  first  printed  in  the  Musi- 
cal Courier,  has  been  rigorously  revised  and  much 
enlarged.  A  few  anecdotes  of  Richard  Strauss  must 
be  credited  to  the  London  Musical  Times. 


335 


ICONOCLASTS: 
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MEZZOTINTS    IN 
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BRAHMS,   TSCHAIKOWSKY,    CHOPIN 

RICHARD    STRAUSS,    LISZT 

AND   WAGNER 

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perament—  a  string  that  vibrates  and  sings  in  response  to  music  — 
we  get  in  these  essays  of  his  a  distinctly  original  and  very  valuable 
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Contents:    The  Lord's  Prayer  in  B  —  A  Son  of  Liszt — A  Chopin 
of  the  Gutter  —  The  Piper  of  Dreams—  An  Emotional  Acrobat 

—  Isolde's  Mother  —  The  Rim  of  Finer  Issues  —  An  Ibsen  Girl  — 
Tannhauser's  Choice  —The  Red-Headed  Piano  Player—  Bryn- 
hild's  Immolation  —  The  Quest  of  the  Elusive  -  An  Involuntary 
Insurgent —  Hunding's  Wife  —  The  Corridor  of  Time  —Avatar 

—  The  Wegstaffes  give  a  Musicale  —  The  Iron  Virgin  —  Dusk 
of  the  Gods  -  Siegfried's  Death  —  Intermezzo  —  A  Spinner  of 
Silence  —  The  Disenchanted  Symphony  -    Music  the  Conqueror. 

"  Improvisations,  now  frankly  whimsical  and  now  almost  serious, 
of  a  writer  who  cares  for  music  and  has  considerable  insight  into 
many  of  its  mysteries,  but  has  also  too  keen  a  sense  of  humor  to  be 
learnedly  mysterious  himself."  —  New  York  Tribune. 


CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 
NEW  YORK 


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